Hi I'm Rebecca

I´m 14 years old. I have foetal alcohol syndrome due to my mum´s drinking when she was pregnant. She did not know what she was doing, so it couldn´t be helped. But when people have FAS due to binge drinking then it can be helped, and people should make sure they don´t drink while they are pregnant – not even the slightest drink.

I go to secondary school. At school I need extra time to answer questions, as I have a slow processing speed. Sometimes I do not understand what I have to do, so I sit and do nothing and then people complain I do nothing. Apparently I hear one in three words sometimes, I´m not sure if this is true. My hearing isn´t very good. If there is background noise from behind me when people are talking to me then I cannot hear, but you usually can pick up what people are saying to you by lip-reading, so it´s not usually a problem, except when people are talking behind you. Making friends at school is hard; I think that has something to do with it as well from something I read.

When I was little, I had a problem with my speaking, which I went to speech therapy for, and now I can speak fine. I have a slight problem with my teeth; some of the problem is due to me sucking my thumb, the other half of the reason is because they are damaged by the alcohol. I´m generally a happy person but it makes my life at school hard.

Originally published in the Be My Parent newspaper in September 2005.

Have you seen the Be My Parent feature on Prenatal exposure to drugs and alcohol?

This article is published with the kind permission of the people involved. You may download it for your own reference but if you wish to use it for any other purpose, please contact Be My Parent for authorisation: Be My Parent, BAAF, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Telephone: 020 7421 2666/5/4.

Last updated: 11 December 07

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