Christine McGuinness has revealed her youngest daughter Felicity, five, has developed a stutter in lockdown due to lack of social contact.
The Real Housewives Of Cheshire star, 32, is mother to Felicity, and twins Leo and Penelope, seven, all of whom have autism, and during an appearance on Loose Women on Thursday she detailed the impact of the pandemic on her kids.
Felicity’s speech has been affected as the kids’ speech and communication has regressed since they have been in lockdown at home, with all three children struggling with the communication they have worked so hard to build.
She said: ‘It’s really affected their speech, I spent years and years going to speech and language therapy with the children they’ve all gone back with their speech and communication, my youngest daughter has developed a stutter’.
Her loves: Christine McGuinness has revealed her youngest daughter Felicity, five, has developed a stutter in lockdown due to lack of social contact
Christine has her three kids with husband Paddy, 47, and she has always been candid about living with autism and how the family cope with their condition.
On lockdown and the kids, she detailed: ‘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…
Opening up: The Real Housewives Of Cheshire star, 32, is mother to Felicity, and twins Leo and Penelope, seven, all of whom have autism, and winstarlink.com during an appearance on Loose Women on Thursday she detailed the impact of the pandemic on her kids
‘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.’
She went on: ‘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…
Her love: Christine has her three kids with husband Paddy, 47, and she has always been candid about living with autism and how the family cope with their condition
<div class="art-ins mol-factbox floatRHS tvshowbiz" data-version="2" id="mol-fcc1ef70-71f0-11eb-8bea-ed5efdb09219" website McGuinness details lockdown on her autistic children