A Practical Guide for Educators
Understanding and Supporting Students with FASD
Students with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) often present unique strengths and challenges that may not be immediately recognizable. As educators, understanding the complexities of FASD is essential to creating an inclusive and supportive environment that fosters learning, growth, and positive relationships. FASD is a brain-based condition caused by prenatal alcohol exposure, leading to cognitive, emotional, and behavioral symptoms. These challenges are not the result of willful misbehavior but are symptoms of a neurodevelopmental disorder that requires compassionate and creative strategies.
This guide offers educators and administrators insights and practical strategies to better understand and respond to the needs of students with FASD. By adopting these approaches, you can build a classroom environment where students feel safe, understood, and empowered to succeed.
Introduction
Educators often face challenges in identifying effective strategies for students with FASD. While these students may appear to struggle with self-regulation, decision-making, and social interactions, their behaviors often stem from neurological differences, not defiance. This guide provides actionable strategies designed to meet students where they are and help them thrive.
We encourage you to view behaviors through a lens of understanding and empathy, embracing the idea that every child does their best when supported appropriately. By utilizing the strategies outlined here, educators can confidently address challenging behaviors, reduce stigma, and promote a culture of respect and collaboration.
Practical Strategies for Supporting Students with FASD
1. Building Emotional Regulation and Validation
Recognize that getting angry never helps. Instead, detach from emotional dysregulation by assuming symptoms rather than ‘bad’ behaviors. Respond helpfully by validating feelings, offering reassurances, and providing a "soft place to land."
Support students through emotional outbursts by imagining how you might respond to a younger child’s temper tantrum—calmly and with clear, concise routines and rules. Your goal is to help the person find calm and regulate. Alternatively, consider how you may respond to and elder or someone with some cognitive decline who is unsettled, and lacking control.
2. Promoting Empathy and Collaboration
Tap into students' empathy and desire to please through collaborative problem-solving. Focus on harm reduction, safety, and dignity for all.
Acknowledge and address the student’s vulnerabilities by providing direct supervision and trusted "go-to" people.
3. Reducing Stigma and Reframing Behaviors
Reframe challenging behaviors as symptoms of feeling out of control rather than intentional misbehavior.
Often lashing out and angry responses come from a ‘fight or flight’ physiological stress response, sometimes a skewed perspective, lack of understanding, fear, lack of control, and embarrassment/discomfort with current situation that is hard for the person. A compassionate response reinforcing healthy boundaries and offering assistance during these times are often the most helpful.
Approach families with compassion, recognizing that parents often feel blamed and shamed. Emphasize behaviors as symptoms of a complex neurodevelopmental disorder rather than poor parenting.
4. Managing Classroom Resources and Routines
Create clear rules about possession, such as allowing two toys at a time, having signage to remind how many craft supplies go per student or books to use etc. to help manage resources and mitigate misunderstanding and frustration.
Use timers or visual aids to help with abstract concepts like time.
Offer manageable tasks, such as starting with one or two questions instead of overwhelming students with ten, or a full page, to help them feel capable and prevent shutdowns.
5. Encouraging Positive Transitions and Planning
Use pre- and post-teaching strategies and summaries to better prepare students for transitions and the new day.
Validate feelings even if the perception of the experience is not accurate. Once calm, explore the situation collaboratively to gain understanding and work toward solutions.
Provide supervision and direct or indirect support through transitions. Invite students who are struggling to be helpers and discuss problem solving strategies with the student to avoid embarrassing or difficult situations that have happened in the past – focus on preventing their symptoms from becoming more challenging for them and others.
6. Avoiding Punitive Approaches
Avoid punitive responses to symptoms. Instead, engage in creative problem-solving to address impulsivity and rumination.
Example: Use "shopping pants" or a zip-lock bag to transport items that do not belong to the student back to school. Frame this as a routine rather than a punishment, ensuring no one feels ashamed.
7. Supporting Emotional Resilience
During challenging situations, assume that students are telling the truth and doing their best. Ask, "What do you need to help you during this difficult time?" or “How can I help you?”
Problem-solve after incidents by discussing the emotional cost of the experience and how to work together to avoid similar situations in the future. It’s important not to go over every detail because they will likely not remember everything and they will be left feeling badly. Focus on the feelings, the impact and your desire to support their symptoms so that they experience more successful social and academic experiences.
The most important ‘learning’ at school is that the school environment is a safe place for them to learn when the timing is right.
8. Leveraging Strengths and Creativity
Notice students' strengths and draw upon them to build confidence and engagement.
Create intentional opportunities for students to highlight their strengths in creative and different ways.
Plan breaks and activities creatively to mitigate risks and protect vulnerabilities. Ie. Interrupt a potentially intense situation by calling upon the student to be helpful by dropping a note off to the principal for example or bringing back some AV equipment to the library. Random and not necessary all the time but a good way to create a good reason to distract and decompress and /or settle the nervous system.
Examples in Action
During an Emotional Outburst: A student begins to shout and throw items during class. Instead of responding with anger, the teacher validates the student's feelings by calmly saying, "I see you're upset. It’s okay to feel this way. Let’s take a moment to breathe together." Or “The other kids are feeling worried/scared, and school needs to be safe for everyone… let’s take a walk and come back in a few minutes.”
Supporting Impulsivity: A student frequently takes items that do not belong to them. The teacher introduces a zip-lock bag routine where the student can return items to the school without fear of punishment. This supports the student in aligning their actions with their values.
Pre-Teaching for Transitions: Before a field trip, we do a countdown, so daily reminders of what’s coming; the teacher reviews the itinerary and expectations with the student, using visual aids to prepare them. After the trip, the teacher summarizes the experience to reinforce what went well and address any challenges collaboratively.
Reducing Stigma: A parent expresses concern that their child’s behaviors are being judged. The teacher reassures the parent by explaining that the behaviors are understood as symptoms of FASD and shares the school’s plan to support the student compassionately. The parent and teacher work collaboratively and creatively to see how the needs of the student can be met with helpful strategies that are most likely to lead to successful experiences.
Creating Manageable Tasks: Instead of assigning a full worksheet of 20 math problems, the teacher gives the student two problems at a time. This helps prevent overwhelm and builds the student’s confidence as they complete the task successfully.
Involve the School Social Workers: Create a circle of support and work collaboratively with family whenever possible to problem solve with information and perspectives from each. The Social Worker can help to facilitate a team approach with involvement of community based resources including child protection services as needed to ensure both emotional and physical safety of all is prioritized.
By implementing these strategies, educators can create an environment where students with FASD feel first and foremost; understood, as well as valued and supported. The key is to approach challenges with the consistent underpinning that the behaviours are not deliberate, the student is not always aware of the challenges they are creating for themselves and others and that their approach with the student is empathetic, and creative.
Educators need to consistently express commitment to understanding the unique needs of the student with a complex neurodevelopmental disorder not likely yet diagnosed and if it is, it is because there are very real and very significant areas of brain based deficits that have been challenging for quite some time.
WANT MORE?
Listen in to Episode 98 of Kitchen Table Conversations with Angela Geddes.
EPISODE #98: Understanding and Supporting Students with FASD