FASD: A Problem in Our Communities

 

Until recently, there has been little information connecting prenatal drug and/or alcohol exposure to brain function or to behaviors. This information linking brain function with behaviors increases understanding, reduces frustration, and contributes to achieving successful outcomes. It is important for all of us to both understand that drinking and/or other drug exposure during pregnancy causes brain damage and that Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is a primary, permanent physical disability.     

 

Many believe that FASD is just a problem in alcoholic families or in native and low income families. The fact is that more and more children diagnosed with FASD have parents who are well educated “social drinkers.” It’s also not uncommon to find FASD in children who’ve been adopted. It takes only a small amount of alcohol to damage a baby’s brain. And the damage is more severe in the early stages of the pregnancy, often before the mother even realizes that she is pregnant. 

 

Parents and professionals become frustrated when standard techniques are ineffective and when children’s behaviors are unresponsive to traditional interventions. In most cases, FASD has no observable external physical characteristics. Often the only symptoms seen in most children and adults with this disorder are learning disabilities and other behavioral characteristics. The wide range of these behavioral symptoms reflects the timing, dose, duration, and types of drug used, as well as the age of the mother, genetics, stress and nutrition. 

 

FASD is a lifelong disability. Like any other disability, early identification of FASD is vitally important.  Identification provides a starting place for supporting people with this disability. FASD causes differences in learning and other behaviors due to changes in the brain. No two people with FASD are the same. Once parents, teachers and clinicians recognize and understand the behaviors as symptoms of an underlying disability, interventions may be developed that reflect that understanding. People with FASD are able to succeed and to contribute in their own way, with understanding and support. For people with FASD often have strengths in many different areas:

  • Artistic, musical
  • Mechanical
  • Athletic
  • Verbal
  • Friendly, outgoing, affectionate
  • Good with small children and the elderly
  • Determined, persistent
  • Willing, helpful, generous
  • Compassionate
  • Good with animals

 

Today, people with obvious physical disabilities are given accommodations to support them in life, e.g. wheelchairs, ramps, and assistive technology. It is just as appropriate and effective to provide accommodations for people with the disability of FASD, in order to promote their success in life. These adaptations include changes in attitudes and expectations.

 

Effective techniques come from understanding how the person’s brain works. Unfortunately, most standard interventions are based on assumptions that all people are able to: learn and remember quickly, understand consequences, form links between words and actions, abstractions and predictions and function at an age-appropriate level. However, people with FASD have brains that work differently. Knowledge about FASD and brain function provides a way to shift understanding of behaviors. Children may be recognized as having a problem, rather than being a problem. As a result, rethinking and reframing interpretations of behaviors contributes to developing effective and appropriate strategies, supporting children and contributing to the well-being of parent and professionals.

 

The following are the primary behavioral symptoms of brain dysfunction that are commonly associated with FASD. None are exclusive to FASD and many overlap characteristics of other diagnoses, e.g. ADD/ADHD, learning disabilities, and others.

  • Memory problems
  • Difficulty storing and retrieving information
  • Inconsistent performance – on and off days
  • Impulsivity, distractibility, disorganization
  • Ability to repeat instructions, but inability to put them into action – may “talk the talk but not walk the walk”
  • Difficulty with abstractions such as math, money management, time concepts
  • Slow processing pace – may require more time to think (ten-second children in a one-second world)
  • Slow auditory pace – may only understand every third word of normally paced speech
  • Developmental lags – may act much younger than their chronological age
  • Difficulty linking cause and effect, predicting outcomes or understanding consequences
  • Oversensitivity or undersensitivity to touch, hearing, smell, sight
  • Trouble with transitions

 

FASD is still underdiagnosed. In fact, children from more affluent families are the ones most often misdiagnosed. Instead, people with FASD are often diagnosed with failure to thrive, attention deficit disorder/hyperactivity, speech and language disorder, learning disability, sensory integration disorder, reactive attachment disorder. Without identification of FASD, many people are constantly frustrated and commonly develop defensive, secondary behaviors and mental health problems. Treatment for these typically does not recognize the underlying brain differences associated with FASD. sThese behaviors can be prevented or minimized with identification and appropriate supports:

·        Fatigue, irritability, frustration, tantrums

·        Anger, aggression

·        Poor self-esteem, isolated

·        Avoidance, withdrawal, running away

·        Anxious, fearful, shut down (“goes blank”)

·        Rigid, resistant

·        Trouble at home, school and with the law

·        Alcohol and drug abuse

·        Mental health problems – depression, self-injury, suicidal tendencies, conduct disorder, seriously emotionally disturbed and oppositional defiant disorder

 

 

Help is available for parents and professionals

in Juneau and other Southeast communities!!

For more information and/or to schedule diagnostic testing, contact:

Ric Iannolino

Juneau FASD Team Coordinator

463-7373

1-800-344-1432