Reply to Anyone on here have a child with FAS or FASD?

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Reply to "Anyone on here have a child with FAS or FASD?"

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[quote=Anonymous]The majority of FASD kids do not present with the facial features.  And a kid can have significant FASD cognitive impairment and not have the facial features.   Some lesser known physical indicia:   hypoplastic fingernails---i.e., the nail bed does not extend all the way to the tips of the finger.  Our DS (who does not have the facial features) has hypo plastic nails---a psychologist clued me in that she had been taught by a pediatrician that nails that looked like our DS' were often a sign of FASD.

Another physical characteristic can also be androgyny, as prenatal alcohol exposure is also an endocrine disrupter.

One of the biggest cognitive impairments is an ability to process abstract language.  This is not as apparent in younger children but becomes quite obvious as kids move in the middle school years.  My son was flummoxed over his math homework tonight until his sister and I figured out that he was thinking that a "plane" was an actual airplane.

Our kids were internationally adopted.  While all older adoptees experience some amount of testing/acting out while adjusting to a complete cultural displacement, it became apparent that our DS had a great deal more trouble adjusting.  And natural consequences, loss of privileges, all the other "typical" parenting discipline techniques were absolutely meaningless.  If he was "stuck" on an issue (perserveration being another FASD trait) then no amount of reasoning or threatened loss of privileges was effective.  And even if he lost a privilege he dearly loved, such as screen time, that loss was meaningless in terms of regulating his behavior.

"Dysmaturity"---i.e., being developmentally behind---is another FASD trait.  The developmental trajectory is elongated with FASD kids---with most FASD kids having the maturity of 8-10 year olds as teens.  This dysmaturity becomes more obvious once kids are in the upper elementary years.    Take their chronological age and divide it by 2 and add perhaps a year and you have a more likely sense of developmental age.
  
Psychiatrist Susan Rich in Potomac specializes in FASD kids.    [/quote]

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