Internet star Emily Loftiss is recalling the moment her family received an autism diagnosis for her now 6-year-old son, Dalton.
“We figured it out around 2. Got a diagnosis at two and a half. It was Cinco de Mayo. I was like, ‘Well, we’re going to go and do our diagnosis and then we’re going to get margs and cheese dip.’ I planned that on purpose,” Loftiss recalled on the Wednesday, June 24, episode of the “LadyGang” podcast. “I did not share until 2 years ago. In August it will be 2 years. So we had already gone behind closed doors for over like two and a half years, going through all this. Honestly, it was just getting too hard to ‘hide.’ He was about to wear our leg braces … because he’s a toe walker. People on Instagram would be like, ‘Oh my god, he’s a dancer like you.’ I’m like, ‘Mhm.’”
She continued, “He’s getting older, people are messaging me, being like, ‘I want to hear his voice, which is like, Who texts the mother I want to hear your child talk? It’s like, also, ding, ding, ding, ding. Like, maybe we’re doing this for a reason. Maybe I’m playing some joyful music. Enjoy the story, guys. Like, you don’t have to know everything. So it was just kind of getting hard to, quote unquote, hide.”
Loftiss recalled that her husband, Jay, was “really adamant” about wanting to share the diagnosis publicly, while she was hesitant.
“I knew when the doors were open, the doors are open, and you can never close them,” she said. “I’ve had a really wild past of my dad took his life when I was 14, I had terrible infertility issues, I had Bell’s palsy, now everything with autism. So when people reach out to me, it’s like two different things. It’s either like, ‘Oh my gosh, I love all your fun clothes you wear. I love how you sell things. Your family’s so fun. I love your life.’ To, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m in the depths of depression. Nobody knows that I’ve had a miscarriage.’”
She continued, “And they’re telling me very deep and dark serious things, and I have to be cognizant because I could just be playing around on my phone — literally drinking a margarita — and someone tells me something very serious about them. So I was just like, ‘Oh my god, this is gonna be another layer to add to the mix.’”
Loftiss explained that she is constantly thinking about her son, which was also one of her hesitations about bringing the diagnosis to social media to yield more opinions about parenthood from followers.
“Your brain just is on overload all the time, of like, ‘What about this, what about this? Like, when he’s 18 — other people are thinking about college funds — we’re thinking about, Is he gonna live with us? Is he gonna live in a tiny house? Is he gonna live downstairs? Are we gonna be able to have a job or drive? Are we gonna be speaking?’”
The Valley star Brittany Cartwright is giving fans an update on her son, Cruz, following the news that he has been diagnosed with a form of autism. “It wasn’t a shock whenever we had it, but to finally have that — it opens a lot of doors,” Cartwright, 36, exclusively told Us Weekly of her 3-year-old […]
She continued, “So then to have anyone on social media want to be like, ‘Did he try putting silver on his heels?’ I’m like, I don’t have the capacity for that. … I just knew that when the can of worms was open, it was gonna be open.”
Ultimately, Loftiss shared Dalton’s diagnosis in an August 2024 Instagram video and received support from her followers.
“Everyone has been so kind. Out of 100 percent, the amount of negativity was probably 1.5,” she said. “I mean, it’s been all wonderful and he is a little angel on earth.”
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