Fantastic Antone Grows Up: Adolescents and Adults with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome - Softcover

Kleinfeld, Judith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1889963119 ISBN 13: 9781889963112

Publisher: University of Alaska Press, 2000

Synopsis

Fantastic Antone Grows Up is a field guide to life with an adolescent or young adult with fetal alcohol syndrome/effects.  Under the best of circumstances, adolescence is a trying time for young people and their families.  The budding adult seeks independence and autonomy while the resistant child within longs for protection and structure; questions about sexuality and work, social commitments, and solitary accomplishments loom large and can create a family battlefield.  For the challenged and challenging young people with FAS/E, the circumstances as they begin maturing are never the best. In this sequel to Fantastic Antone Succeeds, young people with FAS/E and their caregivers report on their experiences coping with the problems of adolescence and young adulthood.  Again the editors and authors have concentrated on the wisdom of practice, as they candidly convey which techniques worked and which did not during the difficult passages of the teenage years and beyond. The twenty-one chapters are grouped according to theme.  Section one discusses the meaning of success for adolescents and adults with FAS/E -- the need to define success in new ways.  Cindy Gere found her path to success, for example, through creative expression.  She graduated from college with a degree in fine arts and successfully completed a program in art.  Many of her paintings, including the one illustrating the cover of this book, provide a poignant and candid expression of what FAS/E means to her.   Section two discusses strategies that work in areas such as counseling, education, sexuality, trouble with the law, and independent living.  Section three covers what families need from the community, including innovative programs that help individuals with FAS/E, and how to get a diagnosis at adolescence.  The book also contains important resources, organizations to contact, and internet addresses. More has been learned about how alcohol poisoning in the womb alters brain function and physical development since the release of Fantastic Antone Succeeds, but science is far from providing the answers that affected young people and their caregivers need.  Until such answers are forthcoming, nothing can replace the voices of experience with their practical messages of coping, caring, loving, weeping, laughing, and -- more often than might be expected -- succeeding.

About this title

About the Author:

Judith Kleinfeld is founder and director of the Northern Studies program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She has published numerous books and articles, including Gender Tales: Tensions in the Schools (St. Martin's Press, 1995) and two books on fetal alcohol syndrome/effects, Fantastic Antone Succeeds and Fantastic Antone Grows Up(University of Alaska Press 1994, 2000).

From Library Journal:

The sequel to Fantastic Antone Succeeds!: Experiences in Educating Children with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, also edited by psychologist Kleinfeld, this work provides a glimpse into what it means to struggle through adolescence and adulthood with fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS). Told through the accounts of FAS sufferers, their parents, educators, and the professionals who work with them, this book shares practical lessons learned through experience and demonstrates why the methods used on young FAS children don't necessarily work when they're older. Kleinfeld also employs her own experiences to illustrate how she learned that techniques used successfully with other special-needs children often fail with FAS children. While the individual accounts point out the struggles and the failures, most highlight and celebrate the successes. The extensive bibliography and resource lists are extremely helpful. A welcome addition to consumer health, psychology, and education collections.DKellyJo Houtz Griffin, Eatonville, WA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Alaska Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1889963119
• ISBN 13: 9781889963112
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 425