Sensory and Motor Deficits
Students with an FASD may:
- Have difficulty habituating
- Have trouble adapting to change; having to move to a different classroom environment every hour or having a substitute teacher can be difficult
- Have sleep problems at night that affect their performance
- Have poor hand-eye coordination or difficulty with touch perception (writing tasks can be frustrating)
- Need to move while learning
Academic Learning Difficulties
Students with an FASD may:
- Have difficulty learning early skills like letter and number recognition, estimating, rhyming and sequencing
- Have increasing struggles as learning becomes more abstract and complex (for example, algebra is much more abstract than addition or subtraction)
- Learn better by doing, need to work with objects, or have lessons taught using a combination of visual and auditory instruction
- Struggle with reasoning, comprehension and problem solving
Memory
Students with memory deficits from an FASD may:
- Need directions one step at a time, multiple times
- Appear to be deceitful when they attempt to recall a sequence of events or when they try to “fill in the blanks”
- Lose things, forget pencils or homework
- Need reminders and cues
- Know something one day but not the next day, or know something learned in one location but not be able to recall the information in a different setting. This can cause challenges with translating what is learned while doing homework to a lesson in the classroom the next day.
Language
Students with language delays or deficits due to an FASD may:
- Have better expressive language skills than comprehension skills
- Talk a lot without really saying a lot
- Not understand idioms, sarcasm, nuance, or be able to “read between the lines”
- Have difficulty describing their feelings (an abstract concept) with words
Cognitive Functioning
Students with an FASD may:
- Score within the average range on IQ tests and appear intelligent but have lower or inconsistent performance in school
- Require assistance managing their day or planning the necessary steps to finish projects
- Have a widening gap between them and their peers as they enter the teen and early adult years
- Have slower processing ability
Behavioral Regulation
Students with an FASD may:
- Appear “moody” or volatile
- React with more intensity than their neuro-typical peers
- Be easily overwhelmed or distracted
- Perseverate (fixate on a thought or action)
- Rage, shut down or melt down
- Act silly and immature
- Require the help of someone who co-regulates them when they cannot self regulate
- Not understand why they are in trouble
- Model the behavior of those around them
- Withdraw and isolate themselves
- Gravitate toward “comfort” friends
- Self medicate with illegal substances
- Prefer to appear ‘bad’ rather than ‘stupid’
- Do well with people who view behaviors as separate from the person
Adaptive Skills
A student with an FASD may:
- Be better served by planning based on what they actually do each day (adaptive behaviors) than what they might be considered able to do based on IQ or age
- Be easily fatigued by work that requires concentration
- Act younger
- Learn better with role play and concrete, direct teaching
- Struggle with a fast paced, typical school schedule
- Need encouragement and reminders about personal hygiene
- Be able to add and subtract but not be able to manage having a checkbook
- Be able to tell time but struggle with time management
- Have the intention of following through with tasks but lack the understanding of
how to make it happen - Live in the moment
- Need extra support and supervision
