Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

At the beginning of chapter eleven, the focus was on prenatal development and how drug and alcohol use can interfere with proper development. Fetal alcohol syndrome is a collection of inborn problems associated with excessive alcohol use during pregnancy. Approximately one baby a day is born diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome.
A friend of my family works at a state run facility in Willmar Minnesota called Affiliated Community Medical Center. This facility deals with thirteen to seventeen year old adolescents that are so violent that their parents don’t want to deal with them or are so heavily medicated that they need help, but who they deal with most are people who suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome. One thing that I thought was really interesting was when he said that when a women is drinking, the alcohol can stay in her system for up to twenty-four hours but it can stay in the babies system for up to seventy-two hours. When these adolescents go here, they visit with psychologists and also attend classes to help these children to get further in life. These children didn’t choose to have these problems in life, it was their mothers who made horrible decisions and ruined the lives of their children.