ning with infancy, the children have problems at feeding and are highly irritable. They also exhibit unpredictable sleeping and eating patterns which make it hard for the baby to be cared for and for maternal bonding to occur. During development, both physical and mental, FAS children have very fine and poor motor coordination skills and it becomes very apparent at the preschool age. They also are very affectionate but at the same time very hyperactive, which makes it a problem for the teachers who have them in class to deal with. This is why they are, during the first few years of school, given the diagnosis of having attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); this diagnosis is given because of their high activity level, short attention span, and poor short-term memory. Many of these children require special education help regardless of the fact that their IQ falls between the normal range. Their hyperactivity calls for them to receive special attention that normal teachers cannot and at most time will not give them. As FAS children grow into FAS adults, their level of development and how they developed begins to show in everything that they do. Since their social and mental health has been compromised as adults they exhibit inadequate communication skills, impulsivity, poor judgment, trouble with abstract thinking, and limited problem solving skills. With all these problems they often have difficulty in holding down a job because of their unreliability, lack of social skills, and functional illiteracy. There are many different factors involved in fetal development in relation to FAS. The two things involved that stand out the most are teratogens and acetaldehydes. These two stand out as the things that are not in a detailed way nutritionally involved. No laboratory tests can rule out the diagnosis of FAS but growing research is directed toward finding the underlying mechanisms that contribute to fetal alcohol damage. Scientists ...
