FASD: Behind The Behavior

All right. Hello, everybody. Back here today. I don't even know what day it is. It's Monday. We're in November, isn't it? I am today going to be talking. In the last week's session, I talked a little bit about confabulation and lying and the difference between confabulation and lying. And I'm pretty sure I said in that that next time I talked, I was going to be talking about kind of how to handle these things. I'm pretty sure I probably talked about how I do get asked the question often from parents or people, how do we figure out if it's confabulation or lying?

My response, especially when we're dealing with kids, adolescents, or even adults with disabilities or brain based differences, who cares? Who gives a poo? Let's let that go. We don't need to sit and focus our energy and time figuring out is this a lie or is it a confabulation? And if you don't know what I'm talking about, you got to go watch my live from last week that was titled something about is it lying or confabulation? And so really, let's not expend our energy on that, especially if we have kids or individuals with brain-based differences.

What we want to do is just kind of let's just go with the fact and assumption that it's confabulation the majority of the time, because probably it is, to be honest. And in the times that it's not, who cares? And so what we started doing with confabulation when we finally started to understand it, and this was only about seven-ish years ago or so when our daughter Akilah was about 20, and she's 27 now. See me mathing really fast like that. But anyhow, What we started to do was we started to teach her the word confabulation.

And so we explained it to her how all of our brains confabulate. Now yours does it more often and in kind of bigger ways sometimes, but all of our brains do this. And so we said, so when she starts to confabulate, we stop her now and we say, oh honey, I think your brain is doing that word confabulation. Remember that word? It's trying to confuse you and make you think things are true that are not true. And so you're not lying right now, but we're going to let you know, we as your parents, the other adults that work with you, whether it's school staff, group home staff, whatever it is, we're going to all let you know when your brain is doing that because otherwise people think you're lying and they don't like to be around you and they get mad at you.

But you're not lying. Your brain is confusing you. And so that's how we started handling it probably, like I said, just about seven years ago, maybe eight years ago, something like that. And that has worked really well with her. The majority of the time when I have had to stop her and say, oh, honey, I think your brain is starting to confabulate, she'd just be like, whatever, and want to change the subject. But there was also a couple of times where she with me has stopped herself and was like, wait, mom, is my brain doing the big word?

And she couldn't remember the word confabulation most of those times. And I was like, oh my gosh, it is rock star. You get a silver star today. We went out to celebrate for dinner that night. I was so excited the first time that she was able to figure that out kind of on her own. And so So if we just handle it like that, again, even if it's lying, here's what we have to remember. The most common times for them to confabulate or even straight up lie is when anxiety is high. When you think you're in trouble, when you're trying to fit in socially, trying to remember things, that's when it's most likely to happen.

And so that's why in those moments, if we can just kind of step away from the shaming, step away from that, because what happens is in those moments, their anxiety is high. They go into the downstairs brain. They're in the downstairs brain. And when they're in the downstairs brain, they're not learning and they're not thinking the way that we want them to be thinking, right? The way they process and see and feel everything is not great when down in the lower downstairs brain. It's called the limbic system.

And even more Even more detailed than the limbic system is the amygdala is where they are in those moments. So it's not when we learn a lot of stuff. It's not, you know, we used to just sit and try to catch our daughter in the lie and buster in the lie and all that kind of stuff. No, we're gonna stop doing that. Instead, we're just going to respond to this differently. We're going to teach them about it and we're going to take that shame and blame away from it. And now, you know, sometimes people will say then later on the next day or whatever, Do we talk about it then?

And I'm like, you can, but most of the time you probably don't need to there. Do you kind of feel bad or dumb about it? And if you're going to bring it up again another day, just be like, hey, remember when your brain started to confabulate yesterday? That was a doozy, wasn't it? Or something like that. Not again in a mad way or a shaming way and just be like, what do you think about that? And just have a really brief conversation about it. So that's how I recommend responding to confabulation. And again, remember this.

is something that people with Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia do as well. So this is another thing to help us understand that this is a brain-based thing. The majority of the time is not willful. It is not intentional. It is a brain-based thing that is happening. And if we can remember that and respond from a more connected, relational, non-shaming, non-anger kind of way, it's going to work way, way better. So thanks for listening, y'all. I hope you have a fantastic week. Happy first week of November to all y'all, and I'll see you next time.