Fetal Alcohol Synd.: Interventions for Families & Caregivers

Answers
A. Children prenatally exposed to alcohol had greater problems with respect to anxiety, and academic achievement, more deficits in social skills, and significantly higher scores on scales measuring behavioral problems.
B. It is estimated that FAS accounts for as much as 11% of the annual cost of caring for all mentally retarded institutionalized residents.
C. For older children, games which require thinking of two concepts simultaneously, such as number games in which the child remembers three numbers, then says them backward or repeats the second or third one back. "This requires that they store what was required, as well as the string of numbers," Thomas explains. For those in Grades 1 or 2, "anything involving several different items like colors, numbers, shapes."
D. The goals of the motivational interviewing sessions were to provide personalized feedback on the risk for an alcohol-exposed pregnancy, to motivate participants to change one or both of the target alcohol-use behaviors, to decrease the temptation to engage in risk drinking and increase confidence to avoid it, and to encourage the use of effective contraception through contraceptive counseling visits.
E. Women in recovery from substance abuse testified that while in treatment, they had not been informed regarding the dangers of drinking during pregnancy.
F. A key learning concept for FASD teens is repetition.
G. The most damage occurs to the fetus during
synaptogenesis, a critical time in development when neurons are rapidly forming connections.
H. Children with FASD and ADHD are commonly quite talkative, yet may lack cognitive understanding of inappropriate answers.
I. Three factors that affect a female’s alcohol consumption are age, role, and marital status.
J. Motivational intervention doubled the odds that women who were at-risk for alcohol-exposed pregnancy would be successful in moving to a low-risk category.