I have been having some frustrating conversations with my 14-year-old daughter who has a learning disability and fetal alcohol syndrome, FAS. Lately, whenever I ask her a question about something, she tells me what she is currently doing. That is frustrating because her response has nothing to do with the question that I asked her. Whether this has something to do with her learning disability or her FAS I don’t know, but I do know that it only started last week. She has been part of our family for 10 years.

Yesterday, for example, she was outside playing army with our eight-year-old son. They were dressed in fatigues, using toy guns, and toy grenades. Apparently, he decided that it might be more fun to have a real grenade. He found a plastic water bottle, filled it with water, and added some real gasoline to it.

When I asked her where she was while he was making the “real” grenade she said, “I was just in the bathroom.”

“Well, yes you were,” I said, “but where were you when Ty was making his grenade.”

“I was on the porch petting the cat.”

“Yes, you did pet the cat on the way in the house. I heard you calling the cat in and told you not to hold the door open because you were letting flies in the house.” I gently reminded her, “but you were just outside playing army with Ty, right?” I never did get any more information from her. I told Ty never to play with gasoline again and disposed of the homemade grenade.

When I returned home from picking up Lane at college on Friday, she was outside playing and petting the dog. I asked her if she was finished with school, specifically the projects that she had been working on for three weeks that were due that day. She informed me that she was giving the dog some attention. “Yes, I can see that, and that is very nice, but are you finished with your projects?”

Then she proceeded to tell me how she had accidentally exited her computer program without completing a report. “Ok, I appreciate that information but have you finished your projects that are due today?”

She then proceeded to explain how much work the projects were going to be. “Yes, I understand that you need to research in the encyclopedia that is why you have had four weeks to complete them.” In other words, she had not started them; apparently, she had convinced herself that they were too much work without even looking at them.

I explained to her that fourth grade is more difficult than second and third are, the higher the grade, the more the homework. “Don’t you remember last year when Dani was in fourth grade at public school? She had homework every night and on the weekends.”

“Yes,” She recalled, “I was going to work on it this weekend.”

I had to explain again that the project was due today; she should have worked on it last weekend. Well, as you can see, it was a rather frustrating conversation. In the end, she was yelling at me, as if I had done something wrong in the whole scheme. I ended up telling her to get back to work.


Other blogs about living with FAS
I Forgot - Living with FAS/FAE
My FAS Child Can’t Stop Stealing
Here is Your Engraved Invitation – Living With FAS
Photo Credit