Dyslexia: It’s been ‘a bit of a journey, but a great one, full of surprises’

Promising young Munster swimmer Dylan Gunn (14) was aware from an early age that he was finding reading a lot harder than his classmates at primary school.

It was difficult for him to understand what his teacher was writing on the board. And “if I was say, reading a book, the words would jumble up”, he says.

Dylan’s teacher in senior infants flagged concerns with his parents, Andrea and Ralph. But they had to wait two years before they could get him assessed, so he was going into second class by the time he was diagnosed at the severe end of the dyslexia spectrum.

“It made so much sense that there was something,” says Andrea now. “I remember passing by his classroom and watching him to the side, rubbing his eyes, trying to look at the board. He couldn’t see what his friends could see.

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“He’d say, ‘I was lonely at school today and I have a pain in my tummy’.” It was “absolutely heart-breaking”, she recalls. At the time they couldn’t figure out why Dylan was so stressed about school.

Since his diagnosis, it’s been “a bit of a journey, but a great one, full of surprises”.

One of those has been seeing Dylan’s talent for swimming develop. He has an “amazing affinity with and love of the water”, says Ralph. It was at a schools’ gala that his parents began to realise he was above average.

“He was up at the end having finished the race and the other guys were halfway down the pool,” says Ralph. They were soon receiving phone calls looking to recruit their son for a club.

Swimming is “very much” a passion, says Dylan, who trains six days a week with Sundays Well Swimming Club “and twice on a Wednesday”. It is a demanding routine that involves getting up at 4.15am at home in Garryvoe, Co Cork, to reach the pool in Douglas, some 37km away, by 5.30am, for two hours of training. Then it’s on to Midleton College in term time, for an 8.30am start to the school day.

“It’s amazing to see his approach to swimming; he gets a lot out of it,” says Ralph. Dylan maintains that school goes better after he’s trained in the mornings. “It helps him learn and probably helps him relax.”

Dylan loves racing, says Ralph. “He has certain standards and wants to beat certain guys. If that doesn’t happen, you see him go back into training and working really hard. He is so focused.”

Swimming has also greatly improved Dylan’s confidence. “If they can find something they are good at and really enjoy, that confidence flows into other areas,” says Andrea.

“Primary school in particular was difficult for him and I think without the swimming it would have been that much more difficult,” agrees Ralph. Dylan’s memory upon being told he had dyslexia was initially wondering what it was, very quickly followed by the realisation that he didn’t have to learn Irish any more - a bonus in his eyes. Later, meeting other children with similar challenges at a course run in Youghal, Co Cork, by the Dyslexia Association of Ireland, made a big difference.

“It surrounded me with other people who have the same disability, so I got to know what everybody else was feeling,” Dylan explains. “It put me in a place where I felt good about dyslexia.”

He much prefers secondary school, where he can walk around between classes, instead of being mostly in one classroom.

How is reading for him now? “For the first couple of sentences I am fine, I can read at a decent pace. Then it is like an immense tiredness.” His head and eyes become sore and he needs to take a rest.

“I get my Bs and Ds and Ps and Qs mixed up.” For classes such as English and geography, he can type material instead of writing into a copy book and in exams he has a scribe.

“My writing has got better – it used to be fairly shocking, But I find sometimes my brain moves faster than my hand. I’d be writing, say, the word ‘the’: I‘d think about ‘the’ but I’d write ‘te’. It’s annoying.”

He also explains how dyslexia encroaches on his swimming. When told by coach to swim, say 1,000m, which is 40 lengths, “I would struggle with the counting part”.

How does he cope? “Normally I let somebody else lead the lane and then I just follow them.”

Obviously in a race, it’s a different story for ultra-competitive Dylan, whose favourite stroke is butterfly. He favours shorter distances of 50m or 100m, as he’s unlikely to lose count.

Working now as a special needs assistant, Andrea’s advice to parents of newly diagnosed children is to seek support and “try not to be too scared of the system”. Zone in on areas that your child is strong at and help them find an activity they can really enjoy.

“Try and make reading fun.” Using audio books, reading to them, letting them watch movies and having fun around stories, all help to enhance vocabulary.

She did, and continues to do, repetition work with Dylan at home. But she is heartened by her son’s assertion that now, even if he had the option of getting rid of dyslexia, he wouldn’t.

Why, I ask Dylan, do you say that? “It’s a part of me; it makes me who I am, my personality,” he replies. “It’s me, like.”