Christine McGuinness has opened up about the challenges of being in school when you're autistic.
The 33-year-old has three autistic children with Top Gear host Paddy McGuinness and has also recently been diagnosed with autism herself.
Speaking to Sian Williams on Channel 5's 5 News, Christine explained that she never wanted to eat in school, which resulted in her having an eating disorder.
She said: "When I was at school, obviously autism wasn’t really spoken about much back then, I don’t think I’d even heard of it.
"But, I missed every single meal time – I didn’t eat when I was at school for years and years and I actually had an eating disorder.
"I didn’t understand then what was going on, but all my reasons for not eating at school was autistic symptoms.
"I didn’t like the busy canteen, I didn’t like the food that was there and I had anxiety about where to sit because I didn’t have friends, I didn’t know who to go with.
"All of these things built up which ended up with me having an eating disorder."
Having suffered during her school days, Christine was determined the same thing wasn't going to happen to her kids, twins Leo and Penelope, eight and Felicity, five.
Speaking about their experience she said: "When my children started school, because of that experience I was able to sit with their headmaster and say 'they aren’t going to eat in the canteen, they aren’t going to eat with everyone else.
"'Please can you reassure me that my children are able to eat somewhere quietly on their own.
"'I will bring food in if they won’t eat the food that’s here' and thank god we are in a really understanding school and they were like 'that’s absolutely fine.'"
The former Miss Liverpool said she 'lacked support and help', which 'could have been avoided if autism was understood back then.'
"Just knowing how you can help yourself and how you can help your children, I think it’s really important and to be able to say it out loud," she explained.
Despite being in a "understanding school", Christine admitted she did have to ask the parents to 'still invite' her children to their kids' birthday parties.
In a beautifully brave statement she said: "Just try and understand and care and include them, for my children especially, they are all younger at school and I try and say to the other parents 'please still invite them to birthday parties.
"Wherever you do birthday parties for a child might be too busy, it might be too loud and can trigger meltdowns so they might not come, but please still include them.'"
*5 News is on Channel 5 weekdays at 5pm
