Mordecai Weynberg on living with dyslexia, dyspraxia and diabetes

When I first started school, I hit a brick wall with learning to read. We lived in a particularly hilly bit of Leeds, not far from school at all, but there was a ridiculously large amount of steps down to get there. It took me and my mum much longer to get to school. Other kids walked down steps like most people do, but I’d step down, and then bring my feet together, and then step down to the next step. Those were the initial things that tipped us off to me being dyslexic and dyspraxic.

Five years ago, when I was 12, I was diagnosed with type one diabetes. My electronic blood tester beeps if I’m having a hypo, so I sometimes end up at the back of church with a little, beeping thing. When that happens, I have to eat something. Some weeks I’ll be doing OK. Other weeks I’ll have one or two hypos a day. We’re trying to get that sorted out.

Dyslexia is a learning difficulty which affects your ability to read and write. Dyspraxia is a much more generalised neurological disorder. It affects reading, both fine and gross motor skills, hand/eye coordination, sleep and your ability to order thoughts. There are core symptoms and then many other things that other people may or may not have. When I’m trying to plan, sometimes I’ll get caught up on tangents, or go over the same bits, not being able to move on…

Mordecai Weynberg is a youth leader volunteer for St John Ambulance at Moldgreen United Reformed Church in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. He worships at Brackenhall URC, Huddersfield

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This is an extract from an article that was published in the December 2018 / January 2019 edition of  Reform

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