The Babies of Addiction
Arthur was already 3 days old when his aunt found him in the Houston garage when his crack-addicted mother had abandoned =ยาเสพติดhim. Arthur’s aunt adopted him, but at 13 months, he was so wild that his aunt called him “possessed”.
She brought him to a special program for infants sponsored by
เธอได้นำไปโครงการพิเศษสำหรับเด็กทารกสนับสนุนโดย
Houston’s Mental Health สุขภาพทางจิตand Mental Retardation authority.
There, he would not let his teacher, Geynille Agee, come closer than eight feet before he began hurling toys at her. Two years later Agee thinks she has made a little progress with the boy; he can now walk calmly down the hall holding his aunt’s hand –some-thing he could never do before.
The first wave of crack babies is just approaching school age, and educators are frustrated and bewildered by their behavior.”They operate only on an instinctual level,” says Agee of her students. “They eat and sleep, eat and sleep. Something has been left out. “Sometimes withdrawn, these children may have trouble playing or even talking with other kids. Some have tremors or periods when they seem to tune out the world. No one yet knows how to undo the damage caused by a pregnant woman’s drug use
When I adopted Abel in 1971, I was informed that his birth mother was alcoholic, but at the time not even the medical community was aware, of the potential consequences when a woman drank—even moderately—during pregnancy. Now, sadly, I knew better. Fetal alcohol syndrome [FAS] could be manifested in a variety of symptoms ranging from the physical (heart, hearing and vision problems, neurological impairments, deformation of the brain) to learning deficits affecting abstract thinking and consistent with low I.Q. My son, to one degree or another, had them all.