e are homeschooling our daughter, after 2 extremely difficult years in public school - FAS kids often aren't enough behind academically to get much help, but their behaviors, which are NOT under their conscious control, are seen as behavior problems (read: the result of bad parenting) - the schools here at least were dead-set on punishing the FAS out of her. It was a nightmare.

As you probably know by now, overstimulation is a big problem. When we homeschool we are able to limit the stimuli and she is able to stay on task, learn and enjoy herself without fear.

The biggest danger with FAS/E kids is the secondary disabilities - depression, crime, mental illness, homeslessness, abuser/victim relationships, being taken advantage of by peers, etc. This is especially true in the FAS/E kids whose IQ's are normal or near normal - the smarter they are, the more likely they are to end up in jail. You can read Ann Streissguth's research on that.

This list is VERY good at addressing individual problems as they come up. Whatever you child is doing, one of our children has done it and we can tell you about it from the other side.

Here are some good links to get you started in your own education:

There are good days and bad days, more good than bad with the medication and

with homeschooling her (less stress).

We've discussed the animal noises before on FASlink. My daughter growls

when she's having a rage. Words are completely gone from her at that time,

and she's like an animal, lashing out and wailing and growling. There's not

much we can do when this happens except protect her, protect the rest of us,

and wait it out. When it's over, she won't even remember what she did, will

be exhausted, and will sleep.

During the rage, sometimes I can give her one or two word commands and get

the appropriate reaction, like "no biting".

Fortunately, these have been reduced by the medication (neurontin is an

anti-convulsant, and I firmly believe these are a form of seizure)

She has never hurt animals intentionally (she did throw a gosling off the

balcony to see if it could fly before it had it's flight feathers - thud!,

but she wasn't trying to hurt her, just being curious, and was very upset to

have hurt 'Gilda')

Yes, my daughter had biofeedback last fall.Helped with ADHD issues but not

one bit with her OCD and SIB issues..

Was very expensive 250 a week, this is including travel expenses.She only

had 20 treatments.

I have very mixed emotions on this treatment, I feel more research needs to

be done in this area.

There is side affects just like with meds, can react like they are over or

under medicated. My daughter got VERY defiant... but when they gave her

proper amount and correct area instant calm..or even sleep.

You can go to http://www.eegspectrum.com look for a article by Dr. Steve

Rothman.

Make sure if you do decide to do , the clinician doing treatment is

experienced with the numerous DX are kids have. Dr. Rothmans was willing to

help the clinician that was doing my daughters treatment, but she refused to

go to him for guidance. The clinician that did my daughters treatment was

very confused on my daughters reactions to treatment, she thought she had to

many DX to help her? I have heard others swear by it and others say didn't

help a bit.To be honest I have mixed emotions on this.We live in Kansas if I

could afford to take her to Washington to Dr.Rothmans I would. but that is

not feasible for our situation.

I hope this helps? Best to you and yours..

The Brown Family

My son was treated with neurobiofeedback. It was very successful. He became

more focused, more conversational, more on track. I'm still seeing the

results work themselves out in his brain. I highly recommend

neurobiofeedback for all our alcohol affected kids.

Dianne

awling in circles meowing.

lad to hear about the TMG. I just looked last night at the Kirkman website, and was really pleased to see all the info they had. They mention things I'd never even heard of. Thanks for giving that to us!

I hadn't caught your story about phobias. You know Christine better than I do, but I would look at sensory overload long before imagining phobias! My Vova is not quite so wild as Christine, but everything overwhelms him. He is a little cutie pie, and still a baby at 5 yrs old, so his reactions go toward crying uncontrollably, for example if he closed the door on my finger, and I yelled, "Ouch! That hurts!", he will burst into tears. He cannot handle stores either, and will drop to all fours and start crawling around meowing--turning into a baby cat somehow makes him feel safe. I pulled him out of pre-school when the organization changed, and every day at noon I found him crawling in circles meowing.

We are doing a couple things now that seem to help him deal with life. The first thing is that we practice stressful situations, like standing in line at the store, at home. Another thing Vova invented is that every night after he is tucked into bed, he wants me to cuddle with him, and tell him the story about the little boy that did whatever it was we did that day. So today for example, as we went for a walk in the forest, I started out with, "Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a little boy who lived in Barsebäck with his Papa and Mama, etc. etc. " going through how they ate pancakes and then went for a walk in the forest. He reminded me of how the Mama got really angry because the boy was walking too far ahead, so I had to work that in, too. This story business, which we started a few days ago, seems to be helping him to make sense of the world.   -- Dianne