FASD Lies and Confabulations
July 10th 2011 08:02
What is Confabulation?
Have you ever had a dream so vivid, so plausible, that you thought it might be real? I have woken from dreams where my children had broken a rule or a friend had betrayed me and for a few moments after waking still been upset and wondering how to deal with problem until I became fully aware that it was a dream. Had I not been aware that the events were only a dream and shared the betrayal or story with another I would be confabulating the story.
FASD children confabulate frequently. They occasionally frequent a world where the dreams and workings of their imagination can not be separated from reality. It is a common occurrence among people suffering from differing forms of brain damage and it is not a purposeful attempt to deceive. One of the best definitions I have read for confabulations comes from Wikipedia
“ In psychology, confabulation is the spontaneous narrative report of events that never happened.”
Here’s the link Confabulation
Confabulation in those with FASD is caused by damage to the prefrontal cortex.(Frontal lobes) This damage causes them to believe in false memories or perceptions. Sometimes the events did not happen at all and are based only in the imagination. Other times FASD confabulations are caused by actual events combined with stories the child might have heard from others being drawn together into a false memory or belief.
For a good explanation read this article at Memory Loss and the Brain.
The oddest confabulation I have ever heard from my fetal alcohol effected daughter makes some sense in retrospect. The story itself makes no sense, but how she came to confabulate such a story does. When she was four years old she either jumped or fell off the back deck. She was not allowed on this deck but snuck out after the cat. My guess is she fell trying to catch the cat but we will never be sure. Her account of the accident is well, unusual.
“ The stars went dark. The ladder disappeared and the aliens pushed me.”
When I raced outside that night, realizing her cries were coming from the backyard, she ran around the side of the house towards me screaming and crying with knees bloody. I held her and asked her what happened. Through screams and sobs that was the story that came out Wild stuff!
While this story makes no sense I can see how she came up with it. The ladder that is usually up against the back deck wasn’t there. There were no steps at the time. My guess is she stepped where she thought the ladder should be and it wasn’t there. A few days earlier, when walking to the store with my teens, she sais she saw something funny in the sky. The older kids jokingly told her it was aliens. SO that explains the alien reference. The stars going dark? I’m not sure. It was dark out and perhaps she expected more light from the stars to see what she was doing. I am certain this was confabulation and not a thought out lie as there was only a moment or two between the time she fell and the time I got to her. Not enough time to think up a whopper like that one.
Since that time there have been many other confabulations that I will share in my next post, which will deal with confabulations and allegations.
As confabulations are caused by mistaken memories, mixed and matched events and sometimes wild imaginations there is little you can do about the stories besides correct the mistakes and help your child understand where the mistakes were made. This doesn’t always help when the confabulations are caused by fetal alcohol effects. My daughter strongly believes in many of her stories including those of non-existent friends living on farms whose horses she rides because she has imagined herself there so many times it has become real to her. Anger and discipline will not cure your child of confabulating as they not aware they are doing it. It is part of an executive functioning disorder not a behavioral issue. This one took me a long time to learn and hopefully you won’t put yourself through the wasted effort of trying to cure this as I did. It’s a part of FASD, not a defect in your child’s character.
Confabulation or a Lie?
Unlike confabulations, lies are given purposefully, and usually should be disciplined in some form. Lies are often much simpler than confabulations and once you understand confabulating you should sometimes be able to tell the difference. If for instance you see your child break a cup, hide the evidence and then tell you they didn’t do it, you have been lied to.
While I think lying should be disciplined so your child learns to stop, it’s an unfortunate truth that lying and bad decision making are often caused by impaired executive functioning skills. It may seem like a brilliant idea at the time to your child to lie. As an extreme example of impaired executive functioning: my daughter took one of her sister’s hamsters out of the cage and was playing with it. She got caught. My husband called to her “Do you have the hamster in your hand?” She yelled “No” and threw the hamster over the ledge of the stairs so he couldn’t see it. (The hamster lived).
It can be difficult to know when to discipline when so much of the behavior we are seeing is caused by organic brain damage. Some parents get fed up and discipline constantly while others let their children get away with everything, I think a good rule is to discipline when the behavior is purposeful. When our daughter lies about taking other people’s stuff, we do send her to her room and make her return the object. As her executive functioning and impulse control problems cause her to repeat behaviors we try to make it more difficult for her to gain access to things that get her in trouble. The older children have locks on their doors now to guard their belongings. The more you can control the environment and your child’s ability to act up in it, the less you will hear lies or have to discipline. Confabulations? You might always have to deal with these.
Next post: Lies, Confabulations and Allegations
(photo courtesy of africa
Have you ever had a dream so vivid, so plausible, that you thought it might be real? I have woken from dreams where my children had broken a rule or a friend had betrayed me and for a few moments after waking still been upset and wondering how to deal with problem until I became fully aware that it was a dream. Had I not been aware that the events were only a dream and shared the betrayal or story with another I would be confabulating the story.
FASD children confabulate frequently. They occasionally frequent a world where the dreams and workings of their imagination can not be separated from reality. It is a common occurrence among people suffering from differing forms of brain damage and it is not a purposeful attempt to deceive. One of the best definitions I have read for confabulations comes from Wikipedia
“ In psychology, confabulation is the spontaneous narrative report of events that never happened.”
Here’s the link Confabulation
Confabulation in those with FASD is caused by damage to the prefrontal cortex.(Frontal lobes) This damage causes them to believe in false memories or perceptions. Sometimes the events did not happen at all and are based only in the imagination. Other times FASD confabulations are caused by actual events combined with stories the child might have heard from others being drawn together into a false memory or belief.
For a good explanation read this article at Memory Loss and the Brain.
The oddest confabulation I have ever heard from my fetal alcohol effected daughter makes some sense in retrospect. The story itself makes no sense, but how she came to confabulate such a story does. When she was four years old she either jumped or fell off the back deck. She was not allowed on this deck but snuck out after the cat. My guess is she fell trying to catch the cat but we will never be sure. Her account of the accident is well, unusual.
“ The stars went dark. The ladder disappeared and the aliens pushed me.”
When I raced outside that night, realizing her cries were coming from the backyard, she ran around the side of the house towards me screaming and crying with knees bloody. I held her and asked her what happened. Through screams and sobs that was the story that came out Wild stuff!
While this story makes no sense I can see how she came up with it. The ladder that is usually up against the back deck wasn’t there. There were no steps at the time. My guess is she stepped where she thought the ladder should be and it wasn’t there. A few days earlier, when walking to the store with my teens, she sais she saw something funny in the sky. The older kids jokingly told her it was aliens. SO that explains the alien reference. The stars going dark? I’m not sure. It was dark out and perhaps she expected more light from the stars to see what she was doing. I am certain this was confabulation and not a thought out lie as there was only a moment or two between the time she fell and the time I got to her. Not enough time to think up a whopper like that one.
Since that time there have been many other confabulations that I will share in my next post, which will deal with confabulations and allegations.
As confabulations are caused by mistaken memories, mixed and matched events and sometimes wild imaginations there is little you can do about the stories besides correct the mistakes and help your child understand where the mistakes were made. This doesn’t always help when the confabulations are caused by fetal alcohol effects. My daughter strongly believes in many of her stories including those of non-existent friends living on farms whose horses she rides because she has imagined herself there so many times it has become real to her. Anger and discipline will not cure your child of confabulating as they not aware they are doing it. It is part of an executive functioning disorder not a behavioral issue. This one took me a long time to learn and hopefully you won’t put yourself through the wasted effort of trying to cure this as I did. It’s a part of FASD, not a defect in your child’s character.
Confabulation or a Lie?
Unlike confabulations, lies are given purposefully, and usually should be disciplined in some form. Lies are often much simpler than confabulations and once you understand confabulating you should sometimes be able to tell the difference. If for instance you see your child break a cup, hide the evidence and then tell you they didn’t do it, you have been lied to.
While I think lying should be disciplined so your child learns to stop, it’s an unfortunate truth that lying and bad decision making are often caused by impaired executive functioning skills. It may seem like a brilliant idea at the time to your child to lie. As an extreme example of impaired executive functioning: my daughter took one of her sister’s hamsters out of the cage and was playing with it. She got caught. My husband called to her “Do you have the hamster in your hand?” She yelled “No” and threw the hamster over the ledge of the stairs so he couldn’t see it. (The hamster lived).
It can be difficult to know when to discipline when so much of the behavior we are seeing is caused by organic brain damage. Some parents get fed up and discipline constantly while others let their children get away with everything, I think a good rule is to discipline when the behavior is purposeful. When our daughter lies about taking other people’s stuff, we do send her to her room and make her return the object. As her executive functioning and impulse control problems cause her to repeat behaviors we try to make it more difficult for her to gain access to things that get her in trouble. The older children have locks on their doors now to guard their belongings. The more you can control the environment and your child’s ability to act up in it, the less you will hear lies or have to discipline. Confabulations? You might always have to deal with these.
Next post: Lies, Confabulations and Allegations
(photo courtesy of africa
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