FASD

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Diaries: Adopted FASD Child You Better CYA

Submitted by JuliaFuller on Wed, 04/21/2010 - 20:35

If you have adopted a child with FASD, FAE, FAS, or a familial history of mental illness, you need to CYA from day one. Some children seem unaffected by prenatal exposure to drugs and/or alcohol. If that describes your adopted child consider yourself fortunate. However, if your child, like so many other FAS children has learning disabilities, lies and steals without showing real remorse get proof. If repeated disciplinary measures do not modify your child’s behavior get proof. If your adopted child does not seem to learn from mistakes but consistently makes the same bad choices then you need help, don’t wait. While therapy and counseling do not seem to help modify behavior with FAS children, you need mental health professionals to protect you and your family. If you do not want your child on medication, that is your choice, but take your child to see a psychiatrist on a regular basis anyway. Are you offered in-home mental health services, take them, and keep them until your adopted child graduates from high school and moves out. Do you think that because your child came home as an infant you do not need to worry, think again. Do you think that because you raised your child in a religious home, and your child attends private school, you do not need to worry, think again, and CYA..

Does FASD Result in Shortened Life Span

Submitted by JuliaFuller on Sat, 02/27/2010 - 01:02

 

An interesting discussion about FASD affecting life insurance acceptance has been ongoing for several days at the Michigan FASD Yahoo Group. Apparently, one adoptive parent honestly reported that her adopted daughter had FASD on the life insurance application. So far, two insurers have denied her coverage based on the FASD diagnosis. Frankly, it never occurred to me to put FASD on a life insurance application. Because there are no specific medical treatments for FASD since there are so many possible symptoms, effects, and characteristics. Instead each person’s symptoms are treated as needed. However, one member then shared that those with classic FAS may be more prone to types of cancer.

Cause and Effect Training

Submitted by JuliaFuller on Sun, 02/21/2010 - 22:37

 

Unfortunately, the cause and effect relationship does not come naturally to the child harmed by exposure to alcohol before birth. For these children, lessons are repeated hundreds of times, with similar outcomes. Learning can be slow and frustrating for everyone involved, including the child. To help our FAS children make the connection between cause and effect, we need to allow them to make mistakes, fail when applicable, and then live with the consequences of their choices. When a poor choice requires discipline we should choose something that seems like a logical consequence of the action to reinforce the cause and effect training. Of course, after the hundredth time of assigning the same consequence to the same child, year after year, we may find ourselves getting quite angry. Thus, I began my quest to find logical consequences that teach the cause and effect relationship, and also amuse me.

How Could You Exclude One Child From Christmas Presents?

Submitted by JuliaFuller on Sun, 12/27/2009 - 22:27

I am expecting an attack from those of you not parenting PTSD, RAD, FAS or other traumatized children for sharing that I excluded one child from Christmas presents. I feel compelled to share because I know others are suffering from their own personal guilt in silence for excluding one child from Christmas presents. Note that this article is not geared towards families who do not celebrate Christmas. Instead, it is to those who do celebrate Christmas but choose not to give presents to one naughty child. A child new to the home is always given a Mulligan and receives presents no matter what. However, our daughter is 16 and came home shortly before her fourth birthday. She knows the rules, she knows what she should and should not do, and chooses to do the opposite.

Take Her to Your House if You Disagree With My Parenting

Submitted by JuliaFuller on Sat, 12/05/2009 - 21:03

poop prints on the plaster wall

 If you do not agree with the way I parent my FASD and LD teenager then please, take her home with you. I cannot guess at the number of times people have talked behind my back and to my face about the way I parent my daughter. She came to us as a preschooler already traumatized, exposed to alcohol both before her birth and after, with a cognitively impaired diagnosis. You could not understand a word she said, she could not run, jump, use a toilet, or sit still. She stole, lied, acted inappropriately, and had poor (nonexistent) boundaries. Like so many hopeful/naïve adoptive parents, we thought she would grow out of those behaviors like other children normally do. We thought we could help her. We did help her, she now has an average IQ, however she did not grow out of lying and stealing. I am not alone in being judged by others for my parenting techniques, I have several good friends who are hurting right now.

Does My FAS Child Have Dyspraxia?

Submitted by JuliaFuller on Wed, 11/25/2009 - 00:00

 

Over the years, I have questioned whether my FAS daughter has Developmental Apraxia of Speech, Verbal Apraxia, Dysarthria, Severe Phonological Disorder, or Dyspraxia. These disorders are neurological in origin possibly caused by a temporary oxygen deficiency, trauma before or during birth, head trauma, or other related cause. Conversations with my daughter are frustrating for me, possibly for both of us. Reading her personal notes as well as written assignments for school can be frustrating and amusing. Her speech problems include problems with enunciation, sentence structure, using proper endings on verbs, and excluding necessary words.

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Diaries: Resources for Getting a FAS Diagnosis in Michigan

Submitted by JuliaFuller on Mon, 10/26/2009 - 13:51

Here is a very useful list of resources for getting a FAS diagnosis in Michigan. When I saw this list on a Yahoo group for families parenting FAS children, I felt compelled to share it with you. There is a link provided for those who are not in Michigan to find resources as well. Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between "normal" age appropriate behaviors and institutional, FAS, or some undiagnosed condition behaviors. But When it comes to parenting FAS children, we need all the help we can get.

Diagnosis of FAS Children' s Hospital of Michigan, Department of Genetics

3901 Beaubien

Detroit, MI 48201

Phone: 313-993-3891

Contact: Ellen Podeszwa, Coordinator

 

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Diaries: Physical Maturity Does Not Always Equal Increasing Responsibility

Submitted by JuliaFuller on Wed, 09/23/2009 - 18:35

Some friends found 12 boxes of old books that someone had dropped off at the local recycling center. They were allowed to take the ones they wanted, and lovingly searched through a box for my family. I began reading a book by Charles R. Swindoll titled “Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back, Persevering Through Pressure.” The title reminded me of the dilemma many of us face parenting our FAS children, except maybe the other way around. Just when I think I am making some progress with my nearly 16-year-old daughter, she seems to regress further than before. A paragraph in the first chapter seemed to crystallize the basis of my frustration in parenting my daughter afflicted with fetal alcohol syndrome.

Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Diaries: My Birthmother Called and Upset Me so I Had to Runaway

Submitted by JuliaFuller on Tue, 09/08/2009 - 21:43

Today, I returned from the store to find our 16-year-old FAS daughter missing. The younger children and I had left for the grocery store around 3:30 PM. They had finished their homeschool assignments before noon; so far, she had only completed one assignment, so she stayed home to work. When we returned home an hour later, she was missing. After about an hour, her brothers and sisters concluded that she had runaway.

Guest Blog: Parenting Fetal Alcohol Children Adopted From Russia

Submitted by GuestBlogger on Sun, 07/26/2009 - 14:21

If the hand print fits

Our Guest Blog Barb Parker traveled 2 times to Russia to adopt from an orphanage in 1995 and 1997. The Agency promised that they knew how to rule out FASD's, but instead they have two with full FAS Diagnosis and one with probable ARND (Alcohol-Related Neuro Defect, also on the Fetal Alcohol spectrum. Early pediatricians also did not know what they were looking at, and at two sent them for testing of various disorders but never called out FAS. Their boys were 14 months and 3 years when adopted from Russia. Now they are 15 and 17 but the oldest in residential treatment. Their daughter was adopted at 8 months from Russia and is now 12 years old.

God's plan had me trained as a teacher of Cognitively Impaired, group home worker, residential school vocational teacher and a Parent Trainer for difficult foster care placements. All this occurred before our 12th anniversary, when we began our family through adoption. I have used every bit of my preparation with my own family. Unfortunately, our foreign adoption experience didn't include full disclosure and 2 years post adoption, we learned our oldest had been horribly traumatized before he spent a year in orphanage. We exhausted our resources and eventually the available community resources as well. He has been in state care and residential for about 7 months. It is still a full time job advocating for him from across the state, plus raising our other 2 and sitting on the MCFARES (Macomb County Fetal Alcohol Resources, Education and Support) Coalition. Our online and local counties parent support group help us care for ourselves so we can continue this 24/7 intensive parenting task of raising 3 children with FASD's.