Brave decision to go public on their children’s autism
We finally got round to watching the Paddy and Christine McGuinness one-off documentary on BBC1 called My Family and Autism. All three of their children were diagnosed autistic at the age of three. It was very brave of them to make this documentary, especially as Paddy didn’t speak much about it beforehand.
I was fascinated to watch it as our son Freddie was also diagnosed autistic at three and watching their journey was a big case of deja vu.
Paddy was very much like me. Loves his kids for who and what they are and wouldn’t want them to change, but he struggles with connecting.
I too have my struggles with Freddie. He is very bright and is high functioning. He needs lots of mental stimulation. He needs order, a plan.
He can easily get upset when things don’t go to plan or if we need to do something on the spur of the moment.
We have been lucky. At his Hopscotch pre-school we were connected with a special service called the THOMAS Outreach Programme and a wonderful lady called Naomi met with Freddie each week.
These meetings involved games to help Freddie acclimatise to the school setting. It helped us learn too.
We chose an infant school based on the impressive SEN (Special Educational Needs) teacher as Freddie has an EHCP (Education, Health & Care Plan).
They have been fantastic. Freddie is now in junior school and the special care he received means he loves school and is thriving. He is popular and tops his maths class. We can’t thank these wonderful people enough.
We parents have struggled. I get frustrated at times at Freddie. He loses attention quickly and his strimming noises can annoy!
In the documentary autism was put down to genetics. Paddy and Christine took AQ autism tests. Christine herself was later diagnosed autistic. Hearing her story, my wife Sarah said ‘that’s also you’. So I took an online AQ test. Although not an official diagnosis, I scored very highly, higher than Christine. This explains a lot. Seems I’m very good at masking!