Thanks My Story if you want to read more...

The money you donate will go to the fantastic charity known as “Friends Of Welcombe Hills School” (FOWHS) which raises money for the school ("Welcombe Hills”) for children with special needs.

My third son Theo was born in September 2009.  He was ( and still is) a beautiful little person with bright blonde hair, chubby legs and piercing blue eyes.

Theo has two older brothers and two younger twin sisters. 

As Theo has two older brothers that had been born within a three year period it was easy to see that Theo was different.  Theo's speech just didn't click in to place like my other two boys, he would have tantrums lasting over twenty minutes if he couldn't articulate what he wanted.  If when we went swimming I tried to park in a different place to the last time Theo would get extremely upset by this small variation in his routine.  If I tried to dress him in anything but stripes for a period of time he would get very distressed and literally scream the house down (there was also a time when he had to wear a spiderman costume for what seemed like months!). 

 He attended the local nursery where his brothers went but he just couldn't settle and again became very distressed.  We discussed the situation with the nursery who recommended Theo was assessed, we followed their advice and this lead to a diagnosis of ASD in December 2012. 

We were offered a place at Welcombe Hills for Theo and whilst I found it distressing initially (almost like facing up to the fact something was wrong which I wasn't wanting to accept) we soon realised that we couldn't have taken our son to a better place.

After only a few weeks of attendance due to the excellent teaching methods and regular speech therapist intervention Theo began to make rapid progress.  When he started there in January Theo was equipped with a vocabulary of  about twenty words,  but by Easter we could have a basic two way conversation with him,  as a result Theo was so much happier, and this in turn  resulted in our family being a lot more settled! 

Whilst I have always kept myself fairly fit (this has been more to combat my liking for nice food and wine!) or in more recent years in an attempt to shift those pregnancy pounds, I have never run (until now) any great distance so I have had to work very hard for this!  I will be running (or attempting to!) the Shakespeare half marathon on April 27th to say a big thank you to all at Welcombe Hills for their amazing work with Theo.

Thank you for taking the time to read my story.

Please give generously to his fantastic school that help so many other children like my son. 

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