EXPLORE THE IMPACTS
Prenatal Use of Marijuana
Prenatal exposure to marijuana can have lasting effects on brain development, physical growth, and behavior. Impacts on memory, verbal reasoning, and executive function can make it difficult for children to translate thought into action, regulate impulses, and sustain attention. Understanding these challenges is essential for caregivers and professionals, as structured support, guided practice, and co-regulation can help individuals build the skills, confidence, and safety needed to navigate daily tasks and transitions successfully.
Brain
Paternal use before child is conceived - impacts brain centers involved with memory, learning, reward and mood. Neural pathways are formed but activity is suppressed. Maternal use can lead to anemia in the mother and lower birth weight for the infant and potential for NICU involvement upon birth. Also higher rates of anencephaly in infants who were exposed before or during the third trimester.
At 4 years of age evidence of lower scores in verbal reasoning and memory tasks are present. Verbal reasoning allows you to “think” before you act. Lower verbal reasoning results in someone acting on their world to make sense of it. They will act rather than think or consider.
This acting rather than thinking before acting is further challenged by the lower scores in memory tasks. If you are not holding information in your working memory, you cannot work with it because it is no longer there. Once again requiring the person to act without thinking through the consequences or even the steps needed to successfully complete a task or assignment. They may be able to tell you what they are going to do or how they are going to follow the directions, but without the ability to engage working memory they cannot work with that information to turn it into action.
Body
May lead to decreased birth weight and increase ones impulsivity and hyperactivity.
Behavioral Patterns
Newborns can have altered arousal patterns, regulation and excitability. Increased tremors and exaggerated startle reflexes in early days of life may occur as well.
A child might experience poor habituation and responses to visual but not auditory stimuli, high-pitched cries and abnormal sleep patterns may occur in the first weeks of life.
Use of marijuana in childhood and adulthood impacts verbal reasoning and memory, visual and/or perceptual functioning and can lead to difficulty with sustained attention reading tasks.
Use in 9-12yo can create deficits in executive function: impulse control and visual problem solving.
Use in 13-16 yo can create attention issues, problem-solving, visual integration and sustained attention issues.
Supports
SUPPORT AND STRUCTURE FOR COMPLETING TASKS.
The person will need support in executing action, which means turning their thoughts into action. They may be able to tell you what they are going to do or even repeat directions back to you, but the part of the brain needed to turn those words into action may not engage. This is very frustrating for the person experiencing it and those working with them. It often results in statements of: “I just didn’t want to” or is mislabeled as oppositional, defiant, or resistant.
Support the person in completing tasks by doing WITH them not FOR them. This also supports co-regulation. If you create with them a visual way to remember the steps or what you did together, you have created a transitional object to represent the safe other, which can lessen their need for that safe other to always be present for them to regulate.
Support to execute action: help the person make a to-do list and complete items. This is not “enabling” a person, this ‘power with’ activity can help people build up the internal capacity to execute action when you’re not there OR even the capacity to ask for help without shame when they need.
Reflect, honor, connect especially when experiencing frustrations. Support the person in expressing emotions and then making a plan for next steps. The Anger Onion can help both the person struggling and those working to support them.
The 3 Ps are a crucial part of all transitions. The personThey will need visual or physical supports or be within 6 feet of a safe other to accomplish the complex brain activity (that many people take for granted because their brains do it with ease) needed for what feels like a “simple” transition.
They will also need to know when they can return to a “preferred” activity. Please know that “preferred” activities are activities that help them feel safe and regulate or burn off stress hormones. They are “preferred” because at some level they are helpful. If the “preferred” activity includes upregulation (getting excited about something or physical movement), they will need assistance downregulating. Their brain and body will not do it without assistance. Co-plan cool down activities into their physical activities or anything that brings them excitement or frustration. The fear center cannot distinguish excitement from danger, so it responds to both with agitation without a coolcold down to calm the fear center (limbic system).