Fetal Alcohol Effect
Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome
By Verna D. Saskatchewan, Can.

I have two boys aged 10 and 12 who have been diagnosed with FAE - Fetal Alcohol Effect. This means that both of my sons have brain damage caused by prenatal exposure to alcohol. The prognosis for kids who have FAE is grim. The secondary disabilities are high. Most will end up in the legal system and if female either in the legal system, or on the streets producing more babies with FAE or FAS.

My youngest son, Richard, was diagnosed with FAE before the age of 3 and according to the system has an I.Q. of 70. This is important in the system because although FAE is a recognizable disability it is not a designatable disability, but being mentally challenged is. What this means is that we get services for Richard. Richard entered kindergarten at the age of 6, almost 7 years of age. At that time he could not read, did not know the alphabet, didn't know his numbers and still had trouble communicating his wants and needs with language.

Richard was at this level when we started the Neurodevelopmental program through Hope Centre. The first thing that Hope Centre did was give us hope that there was something we could do, and that Richard had the potential to do many things. The program is very labour intensive, which tends to fall on the family, usually the mother. One of the big differences between school and the ND approach is input. The school inputs information once or twice and then expects output. With the ND approach we just input, input, input. It makes so much sense. We started Richard on program, patching his eye and ear so that the messages went to the proper part of the brain and then we started to input at his level. Almost immediately we saw results. His vocabulary increased and he started to learn to read. He can now add and subtract and do other basic math. Socially he is well accepted by his peers and his awareness of the world around him has increased ten fold. This does not mean he is without difficulties, but it does mean that we have hope that he will someday grow up and and live independently, or reasonably so. I would't even limit it to that. The major part of Richard's improvement occurred when I had the opportunity to home school him for about four months. Since he is back in the system. his progress has slowed but he still continues to improve daily with his home study program. My oldest son Kyle was not diagnosed with FAE until he was 10 years old. This was partly due to the fact that he is of average intelligence, has good social skills and was coping very well.All of this started to unravel when he hit grade 5. Socially his peers were pulling away from him and more and more he was making poor decisions that were getting him into trouble. Because he had been doing so well and because we did not have a diagnosis for him, we did not treat Kyle as if he was affected by FAE. Having a diagnosis is crucial to success with these kids. Structure and support MUST be in place in order to succeed. Also academically he was having trouble keeping up, because one of the areas often affected by prenatal exposure to alcohol is the executive brain functions. As the children move through the system they are expected to take on more and more responsibility for their actions. If you have impaired executive functions this is very difficult, if not impossible to do so. Now the children are blamed for their behavior and they spiral down. Kids like Kyle, who are of average intelligence, have fairly good social skills and do not appear to be disabled in any way , are at a very high risk for secondary disabilities and are extremely over-represented in the legal system.He was on a fast track to jail.

The results that I have seen from the ND program have been more dramatic for my son Kyle.He complained for years (since grade 3) that the words moved on the page when he tried to read - not always, but most of the time. I took him to have his eyes tested, but his vision was good. His complaints continued.Needless to say although he could read, he seldom did so. When he came on the ND program , one of the exercises we did with Kyle completely fixed the problem of the words moving within a period of six months. He had also been seeing spots in front of his eyes, which moved around. After about four months he started to say that the spots were transparent. A short time later he kept saying: " No spots! No spots!"

Guess what the result is? Now Kyle likes to read, which in turn has helped him in school. To the best of my knowledge, I don't always understand how the school system marks. Kyle has moved from modified language arts in grade 6 to doing regular language arts in grade 7. In fact, the only part of Kyle's program that is modified at this particular time is his math program and he is working at a grade 6 level in grade 7. FAE kids are supposed to hit the wall with math at about a grade 3 or 4 level. My hope is that Kyle will complete a regular grade 12 math program. It may, or it may not take him a little longer, but at this point I believe he can do and be anything he wants to be when he grows up and he will not be a statistic of the legal system.

Kyle has been doing digit spans, plugging his ear to have the messages go to the proper part of the brain and patching his eye for the same reason. His ability to process information has increased ten-fold. An example of this would be in his ability to dance. Kyle has been in tap dance since the age of 6. He has always been a fairly good little dancer, but if you watched him closely, he was always a split second behind the rest of the class. this was tied into his slow processing speed. You should see him now. He is involved in 5 dance classes, ranging from musical theatre to tap to jazz. He works hard and keeps up with the other kids. He is no longer one step behind and he is in the process of taking his grade 2 CDTA tap exam. This exam is hard, and requires the students to be able to process information quickly and then apply it immediately. I believe that the ND program is responsible for for Kyle's ability to process information quickly and apply it. Without the ND program Kyle would be headed for the modified program in high school and from there, his options would be very limited. There are countless kids in the system who, for whatever reasons, have not had the opportunity to benefit from the neurodevelopmental approach. This is unfortunate, as their lives could be different. The school system owes all kids an education and I think it is important to explore this as an option for MANY kids in the system.