The first half of the presentation drove home the point that this is a preventable disease that can only be stopped through education. Unfortunately, there has been a great deal of misinformation (largely fueled by people's hopes) on the topic. The fact is simple: there is NO safe amount of alcohol consumption during pregnancy. Alcohol is the single worst teratogen, more so even than cocaine, heroin, or nicotine. Even a little bit will be detrimental to some part of an infant's brain development, actually dissolving portions of the developing brain. That means that any woman who has even a chance of being pregnant should not consume alcohol.
To be clear, we also need to remove the stigma that is associated with this disorder. It has been fear of judgement and blame that has allowed this epidemic to go unchecked and understudied for so long. That said, we now know a great deal about the condition and its effects, even being able to link specific FASD's to the day in the infant's development that the mother consumed alcohol.
While the first half emphasized the need for education to prevent this widespread problem, the second half went through concrete steps that teachers can take to help students who are suffering from various types of FASD. The largest take-away was to recognize that while these children physically develop at the same rate as their peers, their mental and emotional development are at roughly half the pace. Most of this is because the short-circuited portions of their brains require three to four times the processing work and time to get to the same results as their peers.
These are children who are often thought of as hyperactive, openly defiant, or just apathetic. For most of them, concrete instructions presented in a consistent manner with patience and understanding are some of the major keys to helping these students succeed and thrive rather than fall through the cracks and be shunned by society.
It was a powerful presentation, but you don't have to take my word for it. Here are three websites that can give you better information than I can write in a single posting: www.fasdoutreach.ca, www.nofas.org, and www.kyfasd.org.
If nothing else, remember these two things: there is NO safe amount of alcohol at any time in a pregnancy, and we must work with people at their developmental age, not their physical age.