This past week I read the book called “Trying Differently Rather Than Harder – Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders” by Diane Malbin, M.S.W.

This easy to read, easy to understand, book is only 80 pages including references and appendices, but it is jam-packed full of useful information and insights.

The book is broken into five sections:

• Section 1 – covers what Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is and the affects it has on children.
• Section 2 – “reframing perceptions from won’t to can’t” delves into the characteristics, behaviours, patterns, and diagnose associated with FASD.
• Section 3 – is entitled “Application” and here is where I really started to enjoy the book and its teachings. This section covered how to deal with certain situations, how words used generally can be lost and specifics are required, how a child with FASD likely has many incredible strengths and talents (often in the arts) that are more difficult for mainstream children, and how to support and encourage those.
• Section 4 – covers actual examples of behavioural characteristics that parents/caregivers were dealing with, their initial responses based on parenting techniques used on ‘regular’ kids, and examples of how to change perspectives to change the outcomes.
  This was a great section, and covered many, many scenarios for each subheading – things such as: memory problems; processing speed; difficulty generalising; rigid, inflexible thought; over-sensitive or under-sensitive to stimuli; but to name a few.
• Section 5 – has a list of commonly asked questions about FASD and resources, and was extremely informative. Questions like “how much alcohol during pregnancy does it take to cause problems?”

The aim of the book is to teach parents who may have children within the spectrum of Fetal Alcohol Disorders that their children are not being ‘difficult’ on purpose; they are actually processing life differently to ‘the norm’.

It is a guide to help parents see things differently – as the title so clearly suggests! – and to encourage questions like “what if my child doesn’t really understand how this action causes this consequence?”.

What I enjoyed about the book was the use of practical scenarios with their “before” and “after” solutions and how seeing the behaviour from the point of view of the child let the parent “off the hook” in the sense of feeling responsible for the behaviour (or feeling targeted by the behaviour) and allowed them to relax and find a new way of encouraging change.

While I do not yet have children, and do not even know if I will have children who have been affected by FASD, I will likely be referencing this book again as I begin my journey into parenthood through adoption.

Interestingly, this book was near impossible to purchase in Canada. The bookstores, in BC at least, didn’t have it available. And online bookstores didn’t have it in stock but I could buy a copy from an external source at an exorbitant cost of between $50 to $80 plus shipping! That’s upwards of $0.50 a page!

I did not want to spend that kind of money on an 80 page book if it was not worthwhile.

Luckily a friend suggested trying my local library and while they too didn’t have a copy I was able to access an inter-library loan.

Now that I know it will be a referenced resource for my future, I will order from Amazon.com and have it shipped to me in Canada, even with shipping and duty (if it applies) it will be more cost effective!

I feel that regardless of whether I adopt children with FASD or not, this book has food for thought for anyone parenting a child that does not ‘fit inside the regular box’.

Please let me know if you have read the book and what you felt about the information and insights. Did you use any of the strategies or new understandings? Did real-life applications of these strategies help?

Please also let me know if there are other books you recommend to a pre- or post-adoptive parent…or as a parent – period.

Warm smiles and Love,

Ali Jayne 🙂