Nearly three months after Jenni “JWoww” Farley, 32, revealed her two-year-old son’s struggle with speech delay, Greyson Mathews has officially been diagnosed. “Greyson, he was recently diagnosed with autism,” the Jersey Shore star EXCLUSIVELY told HollywoodLife during our chat about her new skincare line, Naturally Woww, which is now selling a moisturizer made of natural marine extracts. The diagnosis arrived after JWoww revealed in the Aug. 23 episode of Jersey Shore: Family Vacation that Greyson could still not speak, for the most part, after turning two. Fast forward to November and JWoww is ready for another announcement: although Greyson is “non-verbal,” she also told us of his “positive, positive” development! “He has co-therapies [every] week but we’re going to step it up a notch soon and get him ABA treatments, speech therapy,” she continued. And the extra counseling has done wonders in helping her toddler build connections between words and meanings.
“He’s made leaps and bounds when it comes to speech,” the proud mother continued. The MTV icon then clarified that Greyson was vocal, but had trouble discerning the meanings between words. “He’s understanding words better which was his issue. Not that he couldn’t speak, but he would never know what his shoe is or if you said, ‘Greyson,’ he actually didn’t even know his name at one point until he was a little over two,” she explained. “So now that he’s understanding simple words, he’s come so far.”
And Greyson is making leaps forward in just the span of weeks! “He only did ‘blue’ for a year and within the last two weeks he knows green, yellow, red, white and he’s [doing sign language] so much more,” JWoww gushed, adding, “I’m like a proud mom over here.” But JWoww shed light on past misconceptions people had towards Greyson’s approach to speech. “The only thing that frustrated me is there was only one sign shown where he didn’t speak and a lot of people would be like, ‘Oh, his sister’s speaking for him,’ or, ‘He had nothing to say,'” JWoww said of the unwelcome comments. Rather, her issue was that “he didn’t understand words,” and elaborated, “It was like I was speaking another language to him. That was the frustrating part because it didn’t fill in. He didn’t understand what you were saying.”
Ultimately, JWoww just wants Greyson to have fun and be able to chat with his peers! “It was really heartbreaking and frustrating as a mom when you see other two-year-olds that are speaking and living their best life,” JWoww told us, but then stressed, “Greyson is living his best life. He just doesn’t know what you are saying!” Greyson and his older sister Meilani Mathews, 4, are still learning to understand one another, consequentially. “It’s just a challenge and it’s getting him to hang in with Meilani which is the biggest challenge,” JWoww revealed. “Whenever you have two kids that are on two different wave lengths, it’s always amusing, but Meilani still thinks she’s an only child which is also an issue.”
On another note, we must mention that JWoww ultimately came up with her skincare line after realizing how much her home remedied sunblock helped her kids, especially Greyson. “A few years ago I created an at home sunblock for my kids with all natural, pure ingredients and that was just for Meilani — She was one. I started realizing that Meilani was getting these flareups — she has the most beautiful skin in the world and it would be frustrating to her and myself so I started doing at home eczema treatments with all natural essential oils. Then I traveled to France over a year ago to study lavender and calming agents and skin agents and that was around the time that Greyson started having developmental delays where he has sensitive skin as well but he can’t tell me, ‘Oh this hurts,’ where Meilani would be like, ‘Dude, this itches! You can’t put this on me!’ But then parents started asking me and so I started making this a thing. It was over 2 years ago I started it but it was when I went to France where I said, ‘I’m going to make this and it’s going to be Naturally Woww!'”
