'We found out my little boy is ageing backwards like Benjamin Button... and I blamed myself'

The mum of a schoolboy who has been left with the abilities of a baby thanks to a rare genetic disease has told of her devastation.

At the age of five Jayden Skidmore was diagnosed with Duchenne's muscular dystrophy - a condition that weakens the skeletal and heart muscles. It means the 11-year-old has around a decade to live.

Two years after the shock diagnosis, he stopped being able to walk due to muscle weakness in his legs. The life expectancy for a child with Duchenne's is 22 years and his family wants to take him on the holiday of a lifetime before it is too late.

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Mum Jade said: "As Jayden's mum, I'm absolutely devastated. He used to be able to play football, run and do little bits. Now he's just in a wheelchair, full-time.

"Deterioration usually starts with the legs, then travels up the body. We've been told he could go at any age. I just thought it was my fault. I really blamed myself but, it is what it is - there's no way we could've known."

Jade, who is Jayden's full-time carer, says she had a normal pregnancy with her son and thought everything was fine when he hit his early milestones, such as crawling and walking. She believes he started having problems with his motor skills between the ages of three and five when he could not walk properly.

Stepdad Sean Dudley and Jade took the tot to see a child development specialist, who gave him a blood test. In September 2018, the results came back showing Jayden's creatine levels were at 1600 units-per-litre, and he was told the normal level was supposed to be in the hundreds.

He was diagnosed with Duchenne's muscular dystrophy and Jade had a blood test