Dyslexia diagnosis gives Bognor boy the confidence to write book

Chichester Free School student Oliver Hilditch had never felt confident writing essays, book reports or short stories.

“The most he’d ever written for a piece of work was probably around 300 words, and that’s at the high end,” his dad, Alex Hilditch said.

“Because he was struggling with it and everything else, it just killed his confidence,”

That was until Oliver was diagnosed with dyslexia and dysgraphia just after his 14th birthday.

“When we got the results for that, it was almost like a light switched on for Oliver. He knew the ability was there, he just needed to do things a slightly different way.”

After some extra tuition, Oliver, who lives in Bognor Regis, discovered that not only did he quite like writing, he was actually very talented.

Supported by his parents and his tutors, he eventually wrote a 5,000 word short story called ‘Moth Men’, the longest piece of written work he’d ever produced.

‘Moth Men’ has since been released as a book, published by White Magic Studios and Oliver’s parents say it has done wonders for his confidence.

“He was speechless when the books arrived. It was like all his Christmases came at once,” said Roma Hilditch, Oliver’s mum.

She added: “we’ve all talked about how difficult the current situation is, with people self-isolating or working and studying from home but, actually, for Oliver, it played out in a completely different way.

“We had so much more time with him, and we discovered that he doesn’t work as well in a class of 30, he’s much better on his own, because he just gets on with the work.”

To find out more about Oliver’s book ‘Moth Men’, click here