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The Bottom Line

By Diane Malbin, MSW; 43 pages. Subtitle: Strategies for Professionals

Don't let the subtitle fool you -- this booklet may have been written for chemical dependency professionals, but it's a topnotch resource for parents as well. Short, cheap and easy to read, it goes beyond a basic description of FAS to provide useful ways of thinking about and dealing with its challenges. Amazing how such a slim volume makes so much sense out of such a confounding disorder.

About the Guide Rating



Pros

• A quick way to pick up solid information about FAS/E.
• Provides a framework for understanding often contradictory behaviors.
• Emphasizes FAS/E as a handicap that requires accommodations, not bad behavior to "fix."
• Gathers useful research and diagrams in one compact place.
• Inexpensive enough that you can buy copies for everyone who works with your child.

Cons

• Several pages at the end really are just for chemical dependency professionals.
• Not always readily available from online booksellers.
• Greater emphasis on understanding than on actual hands-on strategies.
• Short is nice, but it's hard to see a good book end.

Description

• Due to the shortness of the book, there are no chapters. Some subheads follow:
• Characteristics associated with Fetal Alcohol Effects
• Theoretical construct: making sense of the puzzle of FAS/FAE
• Difficulty translating information from one sense into appropriate behavior: gaps in links
• Difficulty generalizing information: gaps in associations
• Difficulty perceiving similarities and differences: gaps in comparing and contrasting

• Additional symptoms that may indicate organic brain damage
• Cycle of deterioration
• A model for rethinking behaviors
• Understanding the source of behaviors, not fixing symptoms

Guide Review - Book Review: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Fetal Alcohol Effects

“It’s been said that parenting children with undiagnosed FAS/FAE is like trying to find your way around Cincinnati using a road map of Denver. It’s a good map -- it worked in another city, and some of the streets have the same names, but they just dead-end or don’t go where you expect.”

Parents of fetal alcohol affected children know well that feeling of driving with a bad map. A child can seem to sincerely want to follow the rules, but break every one. Something learned today may be forgotten tomorrow. Experience may have no effect on behavior or appreciation of consequences. Kids may have symptoms of a host of disorders -- autism, ADHD, RAD, OCD, ODD, TS -- but what works for those diagnoses does not necessarily work for them. Chasing after an explanation that makes sense can be exhausting.

Which is why Malbin's book is such a godsend. In clear friendly language and a compact format, she provides that road map parents so need to follow their children's twists and turns. She explains why a diagnosis of FAS/E is so important, despite what many professionals will tell you, and provides a sensible framework for understanding these children's many challenges. She also makes the all-important point that the focus must be on changing the environment so they can succeed -- the brain damage must be considered as a physical handicap to be accommodated. That's a message schools need to hear, too, and the low price of this booklet means you can spread it around.

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