About me
My name is Poppy-Jo, or you can call me Poppy for short. Here’s a picture taken when things were about to change for me in a big way, more of that later.
I like to wear ear defenders to keep the noise out during the day. Why? Imagine being in a room where you can hear every conversation, every little sound? That’s what it’s like for me. Don’t get me wrong, I can take them off if I need to, but when I’m out, it’s just easier to put them on.
Family
Me and my brother were born in 2006 – did I mention I’m a twin? He’s older than me, but only by two minutes. And we look nothing like each other, despite people trying to think of a single feature that makes us look similar. And my mum tells me that for the first year, so many people kept saying – are they identical? Erm, no.
I have three brothers and one sister. Me and my twin brother are the youngest.
My diagnosis
I was diagnosed with global development delay at just a few months old and autism at 4 years old.
Not long after I was born, it became clear that I was not developing as quickly as my brother and not hitting milestones that apparently babies are supposed to hit..
What followed was a blur of hospital appointments, genetics, scans, hospital visits, operations, trips to A&E…you name it, I’ve done it.
I was diagnosed with autism after I’d been attending nursery with my brother. My mum says she remembers the meeting as if it was yesterday – there were so many people there. They all sat round a table and talked about me for a long time and that’s when I got the formal diagnosis.
The diagnosis doesn’t mean anything to me really, but my mum says it helps to explain things to people that don’t understand.
She says we have to teach them about autism.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not easy when you’re trying to find out why you’re different. It’s a bit like going on a journey, when you’d planned to go to Spain and you end up in France. It’s lovely in France, it’s just not where you were expecting to go, so it takes a bit of getting used to.
Schools
When it was time to think about moving into year one at school (around the time the picture was taken), my parents took the decision to move me to a special school- this was heartbreaking for them at the time because they had to split me and my brother up – but turned out I loved it there and it was the best decision!
I go to secondary school now and I’m in the sixth form and we do something different every day.