Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD)
information taken from 'Behaviour Skills for Parents and Support People' by Trevor Lewis
Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is not a myth, and is not a small problem. Simply put, any alcohol a woman drinks during pregnancy will pass into the placenta and subsequently through into the fetus. Alcohol is a toxin, in other words it is actually poisonous to the human body and so does damage to bodies that can not efficiently process the alcohol out of their system quickly.
FASD is an all incorporating name that covers the different levels of effects that pre-natal exposure to alcohol can cause, those being: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS), Fetal Alcohol Effects (FAE), Partial Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (pFAS), Alcohol Related Neurodevelopmental Disorders (ARND), Static Encephalopathy Alcohol Exposed (SEAE) and Alcohol Related Birth Defects (ARBD). While some babies born with full FAS will have the characteristic physical features, which may include microcephalic head (small head, meaning smaller brain), small eye openings, small nose, smooth or lack of philtrum (line on upper lip), etc, others without the facial characteristics may still have the same brain damage and so face the same life long challenges.
There is no known safe amount of alcohol to drink while pregnant. Any amount at any stage of the pregnancy may cause irreversible brain damage to the unborn baby. Again, this is not a myth, yet the amount of ignorance and misinformation particularly in some smaller countries such as New Zealand leads people to believe that it is nothing to worry about and is just the latest ‘pc’ (politically correct) subject to push onto the public. Frighteningly there are even medical doctors who will tell pregnant women and others that it is perfectly safe to consume moderate amounts of alcohol while pregnant.
“There is no known safe amount of alcohol to drink while pregnant.”
A study by John Olney (
The behavioural problems caused by FASD can be quite extensive and life affecting. Some of the more severe behavioural problems are as follows:
ü Difficulty connecting consequences to actions. For example, one teenage girl with FASD (some years ago) was found to have taken a four year old cousin swimming late one night after climbing the swimming pool security fence. To start with they were having a good time, but soon the four year old became tired and began crying and wanting to go back home. The older girl, with FASD, quickly discovered that if she pushed the cousin’s head under the water she didn’t cry. This of course ended with the four year old drowning. The older girl appeared to never understand the connection between her pushing the toddlers head under the water and her subsequent death. To her she was simply stopping the crying, so how could her cousin’s death be anything to do with her?
ü Lack of Impulse Control. This means that often acting first and thinking later is a common issue. This is due to damage to a part of the brain called the Corpus Calossum, which joins the right half of the brain to the left half, allowing the two parts of the brain to communicate with each other. The left side of the brain processes facts, rules, logic, etc while the right side processes feelings, creativity and IMPULSES. So, if there is damage to the part of the brain that links these two hemispheres, often the right side of the brain acts independent of the left side and so facts and thought about possible consequences simply does not happen. So, act first, think later, is a reality sometimes for people with FASD.
ü Very concrete thinking, struggling with abstract terms. The same girl as in the earlier example at one stage was being supported at a residential home for girls with challenging behaviour. However, she would regularly abscond from the house only to be picked up by the Police each time and returned. She continued the behaviour again and again, until one day someone asked her what it was about the rule she did not understand. After all, there were signs everywhere saying “No Running Away”. The girl replied “I’m not running away though. Each time I only walk, I don’t run.” Keep in mind that the girl was not being sarcastic, she truly believed she wasn’t breaking any rule, as how could her ‘walking away’ break the no ‘running away’ rule?
A person affected by FASD will also face many other challenges, including memory problems, understanding the concept of time (how long to wait, how long an activity lasts, when something occurred or will occur), and often forming inappropriate relationships with others. With all these challenges, it is no wonder that a very large percentage of people affected by FASD end up with interactions with law enforcement, and many also face mental health and addiction issues.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
BEHAVIOURAL PREVENTIONS and INTERVENTIONS for FASD
Patience, Tolerance and Repetition: It has been said that a child affected by FASD may need to hear the same description of how to perform a certain task up to a 1000 times before they retain the needed information. Some will cringe at this, but of course it does not mean repeating the same instruction a thousand times on the same day. But what it may mean for some children/adults affected is that just telling them two or three times about not touching the hot oven, will turn into telling them every single time the oven is on for years on end. Of course some will retain information quicker than others, so like any other disorder treat each person as an individual and adjust your instructions to the level they function at.
