Transcript

ARABELLA:

You'll find that if Iris is an environment that she loves, if she's outside in nature and some people-- like the human environment is good. So if people are not asking her direct questions, if they're just hanging out with her and not in her personal space, then she can be very social and she can be smiling and happy and want to ride on your back, like any sort of toddler would at that age.

But as soon as you get her in an environment which is difficult for her, say in a cafe with lots of loud noise or a toddler group, you begin to see a completely different child. She stims a lot, which is sort of these almost like involuntary movements with her hands. So she'll flap her hands. She hums to kind of-- I think it's to block out everything else and to cover it with her own sound, like something the she can control.

And she also tends to block people out. So she'll get a book and she'll just put it in front of her. And she'll lay out toys all around her, so basically you can't get in her space. And then if you move one of those things, she'll put it right back and make sure that she's got this little barrier around her.

But so it really does depend. She can seem severely autistic in some moments and then she can seem so typical in other times.