Understanding Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
Effects on Behavior and Learning
Research has shown children with alcohol-related learning problems to differ in certain ways from children with mental retardation due to other causes.
Language - children with FAS show equal or higher expressive language than receptive language. Expressive vocabulary is the number of words you use to express yourself, while receptive language is the number of words you understand. For almost everyone else, receptive language is much higher. For example, you probably know the word 'citizen' but it is doubtful that you said that word today.
Because of this difference, parents and teachers often overestimate the child's ability to understand. This problem continues through the school years and adulthood. The article, "Mistakes I have made with FASD clients" is a fascinating read by an attorney, David Boulding. While we hope that legal problems with your child will never occur, or, at worst, many years in the future, the problems this lawyer sees are characteristics of people with FAS. For example, because his clients were able to tell their stories in 'amusing and funny ways' , the attorney did not notice their handicap in reasoning. When he asked them to tell in detail what actually happened they often had trouble filling in all the details, connecting cause and effect or predicting consequences.
Behavior - Again, the same problems Mr. Boulding mentions can be seen in childhood as well. For example, people getting caught over and over for the same crime and not learning from the experience. With a child with FAS, many parents and teachers have told us that they can tell their child, "You do not touch strangers." They can get their child to repeat, "I should not touch people not in my family. People don't like that."
And, ten minutes later, their child is hugging some stranger in McDonalds.
Another behavioral trait is being overly trusting. The same trait that means your young child will hand over his lunch to a classmate, lend toys to children who don't return them, and get into a car with strangers means he or she is an easy victim later in life. As David Boulding found, his clients with FAS were often one of two or three people involved in a crime but the only one convicted. While their 'friends' would give evidence against each other to get lighter sentences, it did not occur to the person with FAS that they could not trust their friends, or the judge or the prosecutor.
NEXT: Helping Children with FAS