11/10/2026
You adopted your child. You were given their history. You asked the questions. You trusted that the information you needed had been shared.
And then, years later, you make a Subject Access Request and find something buried in the records:
Prenatal alcohol exposure.
Suddenly, some of the things you've spent YEARS trying to understand look different.
💛 The difficulties with memory.
💛 The same mistakes happening repeatedly.
💛 The emotional regulation.
💛 The processing.
💛 The apparent "defiance".
💛 The struggle to understand cause and effect.
And perhaps you've spent all that time exploring autism, ADHD, attachment, trauma, behaviour, parenting strategies... wondering why nothing quite explains the whole picture.
That lost time can feel devastating.
But this conversation needs nuance too. Sometimes prenatal alcohol exposure genuinely isn't known or documented when a child enters care. Sometimes information is incomplete. But where information IS known, it can be enormously important to a child's developmental history and future assessment.
Because this isn't about blaming birth parents.
And it isn't about blaming adoptive parents who couldn't possibly act on information they didn't have.
It's about giving children the fullest possible understanding of their own story, so we can give them the right support. 💛
If you're reading this thinking, "This is us", our brand-new FASD webinar could be a really important place to start learning more.
📅 10th November 2026 | 7pm
🎟️ Book here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/fasd-fetal-alcohol-spectrum-disorder-tickets-1996994276639
And if you've discovered prenatal alcohol exposure much later in your child's journey, you're very welcome to share your experience below. I suspect far more families will recognise this than we realise.
