Christine McGuinness has opened up about how lockdown has affected her three autistic children.
The reality star and her TV presenter husband Paddy McGuinness are parents to three kids – seven-year-old twins Leo and Penelope, and four-year-old Felicity.
All three of their children have been diagnosed with autism, and Christine has been open about their struggles on social media.
During an interview on Loose Women today, the 32-year-old revealed her youngest daughter Felicity developed a stutter last year due to the lack of social contact.
Christine said: “It’s really affected their speech. They’ve regressed quite a lot. Again, speech doesn’t come naturally to them…”
“Spent years going to speech and language therapy with the children and I still do, but they’ve all gone backwards with their speech and communication skills…”
“My daughter, Felicity, developed a stutter over the first lockdown, which was never there before. It was every single word so it was quite severe…”
“She is still in speech therapy getting help for that, it has got a little bit better now she’s gone back to nursery. But these are problems that definitely wouldn’t have come into our lives if it wasn’t for the global pandemic.”
“It’s been a rollercoaster. It started off extremely difficult, for everyone it was a massive shock. Our kids are autistic and they struggle with shock…”
“All of these differences were suddenly thrown at them, the school was closed, not allowed friends or family over, which we used to do, at weekends we couldn’t go to the park.”
“With three children that struggle with change anyway and don’t really understand an awful lot, that was extremely difficult, for them to suddenly change overnight…”
The mum-of-three continued: “We did kind of get used to it over the summer, they did stop asking about going out and that’s sort of where we’re at now.”
“It’s quite sad really that they now accept it’s normal to stay in.”
“We’ve spent years and years encouraging our children, it doesn’t come naturally to them, to go and socialise.”
“Going out to busy places and new places like play centres – they can be quite frightening – it took them years to do that quite happily…”
“Now they don’t even ask about it, it’s like it doesn’t exist anymore. It’s quite sad. I do think if/when things go back to normal we’re going to have to start again with all of that.”
“We’re going to have to really build up their confidence again as anxiety is through the roof.”
Despite their struggles, the proud mum went on to say: “We’ve had some magical, magical moments.”
View this post on Instagram
“Overall they’re happy, they’re healthy and they’re doing absolutely amazing and I love them to bits and I’m dead proud,” she added.
Autism is a lifelong developmental disability that affects the way a person communicates and relates to people around them.
People with Autism may have impairments in social interaction, social communication, and imagination, and it is often diagnosed at an early age.
