People with FASD are very different from each other. We have two sons, one of whom has always had behavioural issues—the second son. The older son never has. He only once got into trouble at school for something or other, although I must say that he did intimidate a few people.
We really kept them very busy, with a lot of supervision, which was part of life for us in terms of being an involved family. I think that is really relevant.
Some things that helped in certain cases were things such as competitive swimming to work out incredible energy, and scouting, camping—all kinds of things. Everybody is different, but you tend to promote the things that kids are good at.
But you're asking me specifically for triggers. I'm not thinking about triggers with respect to my older son, but the younger one got into trouble a great deal and did the most peculiar things. The way we benefited in those days was that you could get extra help in school without having to jump through a whole lot of hoops. Because they needed help, the help was provided, and that is key. But that's not what you get now.
I felt we were lucky, because my second son would do very peculiar things, but instead of panicking, the vice-principal would call and say, “Do you know what he did today?” I remember once he even took some old knife that had no blade on it and put it in his sock. The vice-principal simply called up and said “Do you know what he did today?” instead of making a red alert to somebody.
There was just a general awareness that, yes, these boys had special needs, and they were different. They are both aboriginal, by the way, and that was a factor in their being different in an Ontario community. But the general thing was that we cared and we were going to see what we could do for these kids, and that made a huge difference.
Am I answering your question?