Ever since he was in the first or second grade, Quinn Rees has struggled in school — despite being a very bright boy. That’s because Quinn, like an estimated 700 million other people around the globe, suffers from dyslexia, a learning disorder that makes reading difficult.
His parents, Nicola and Christian Rees, tried unsuccessfully to find a solution in South Africa, where they lived.
“All the interventions we tried, they just didn’t go anywhere,” said Nicola Rees.
At the same time, Quinn was missing opportunities at school. He was passed over for a part in a play because of his difficulty reading — even though he was actually very good at remembering lines.
“I couldn’t watch him struggle any longer when I knew he was capable of so much more,” his mother said.
Eventually, she discovered some posts written by members of a dyslexia group on Facebook that mentioned The Morris Center, which is located in Ponte Vedra Beach. The center includes a clinic that addresses neurodevelopmental disorders, such as dyslexia.
The Facebook posts were all complimentary, and Nicola Rees saw the wisdom in enrolling her son in an intensive program like the one offered by The Morris Center. She reached out and learned that the clinic could work with Quinn online, but she thought it best to actually bring him to the First Coast so that he could interact directly with the clinic’s founder, Dr. Tim Conway, and the therapists.
Still, it would mean traveling thousands of miles — no small consideration. But as Nicola Rees said, “All the heavens seemed to align, so we decided to take him out of school for six months and bring him here.”
So, in July, Quinn — now 12 years old and in the sixth grade — his parents and younger brother, Zac, arrived in Northeast Florida. It turned out to be the right decision.
“There just isn’t anything in South Africa like this,” Nicola Rees said.
Quinn was enrolled in four programs, which build on one another, and soon he was showing real progress. At first, he was instructed in the formation of sounds.
“The child has to look at your face and see the shape that your mouth is making,” his mother said.
This was an important step, as he generally didn’t look at people when they spoke. He couldn’t necessarily tell, for instance, if they ended words in a T or a D.
“He’s much more aware of that now, so that will change his spelling,” Nicola Rees said.
He progressed to a place where he was asked to describe images in his mind when he heard a sentence, such as “The cat sat on the mat.”
“This was something he never did before,” his mother said. “Whenever I said to him, ‘Can’t you see it in your mind?’ he said, ‘No, I can’t see anything.’”
The boy was taught to create a mental image, and soon he could read an entire page out of a book. From there, he progressed to grammar and writing and is now finishing up a program on math.
“He was able to do math before, but now he’s incredible at it,” his mother said. She added that a behavioral therapist at the center meets with her son weekly, encouraging him.
“They care about making a difference in a child’s life,” she said. “Other places we’ve been or things we’ve done, they test the child, and they write a nice, fancy report and then, that’s it. They leave you to it.”
Before finishing up on Jan. 27, Quinn will be retested to measure his progress, and the family will return to South Africa. But support from the team at The Morris Center doesn’t end there. They will continue to follow up with both the school and with the family.
“They’ll see (Quinn) three times a week for an hour, helping with his homework, helping him integrate everything that he’s learned here, apply it to his regular life,” Nicola Rees said.
In addition, the family can call whenever they have questions.
“I felt supported here,” Quinn’s mother said. “We felt that the people who work here really understand our children, which we hadn’t felt before.”
