The other day when I was in a pub with my friends I saw a couple of women in fairly advanced stage of pregnancy gulping down beer after beer with full abandon. I was shocked and almost felt like going up to them and giving them a little shake and informing them how it could affect their newborn. I only prayed that this was one off drinking episodes with these ladies.

Women who are pregnant should understand that alcohol use or rather abuse can lead to mental retardation and birth defects. Besides this it can cause increased risk of miscarriage, low birth weight, and also stillbirth.

Drinking alcohol when you are pregnant can cause serious defects in the baby called Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS). Babies with FAS have may have:

1)    face deformities: small heads, small upturned noses, small eyes, uncoordinated eyes, webbing between eyes and nose, drooping eyelids, etc.
2)    organ and skeletal deformities: kidney and heart abnormalities, genital malformations, etc.
3)    neurological handicaps: retardation, poor memory, poor language skills, poor coordination, attention deficit, etc.
4)    developmental problems: small stature, failure to ‘catch up’, delayed milestones, etc.
5)    behavioral problems: anxiety, social withdrawal, etc.

Doctors usually advice a woman who even planning to be pregnant to avoid all alcohol and alcoholic beverages.

Alcohol abuse in pregnancy may affect some babies more and other babies less, and we don’t know yet why this happens. Even if a baby appears healthy, he will have problems getting along with people, paying attention, and other behavioral issues if his mother drank alcohol when she was pregnant with him.

Remember: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is a serious birth defect, but it is 100% preventable.

Do you drink but think that you are not addicted? Take this test:

Self-screening for alcohol

Read More

1. About the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

2. South African children ravaged by Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

3. Drinking alcohol during pregnancy can cause future cognitive problems for your baby

Some more on autism and how attitude and teaching matter.

To take a small example – autistic children rarely look at others in the eye. To get them to look at you, teachers and therapists may suggest exercises like making the room dark by turning off all the lights and then shining a flashlight into your eyes.

I tried this out and yes, it does seem to work. But then an autistic child is also more likely to make eye contact with someone who is friendly with him, affectionate, smiling, and in a good mood.

Go to any special school for autistic children, and you will notice that children of mothers who are cheerful seem to be happier than other children and learn better too. Are the mothers happy because their children are better or are the children better because the mothers are happy?

Psychologists and psychiatrists may debate but I wish every parent and teacher with autistic children would remember that they, like all other children, do much better when the adults in their lives have a positive attitude about them and accept them and respect their differences.

It bothers me how so much of the literature on autism and other lesser problems like ADD and ADHD  concentrate on, basically, how the neurons ‘misfire’ in the brain.

Read more about:

1. What is autism?

2. The drug Lupron - doctors say it is unsuitable for autism.

3. A portable communication system for autistic children