Best of Times, Worst of Times: Ben Way.
At 17, Way became one of Britain's youngest self-made millionaires, and at 20 he was voted Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Now 26, he recalls a childhood blighted by dyslexia and how his life miraculously changed the moment he got his hands on a computer
When I was five, my parents were going through divorce. It was a turbulent time. I still remember the arguments in the house. They upset me, but I didn't help.
I was an incredibly difficult child. I was hyperactive, disruptive, emotional always screaming, shouting, storming off, running away, leaving damage in my wake.
If I wasn't breaking things or hurling books down the stairs, I was taking things apart toasters, plugs, TVs, any gadget I could get my hands on.
Playgroups were out of the question, because I might break furniture or accidentally set fire to something. Mum, who also had my baby sister, Hermione, to take care of, was incredibly patient.
She was a special-needs teacher and around this time she realised I might be dyslexic.
She'd just got a job at a private school in Devon, and as part of the package I was allowed to attend for free.
But, like a lot of dyslexic kids that age, I fell at the first hurdle of the education system. Letters and numbers were a battleground.
I'd sit there with a pencil and paper and find it impossible to write anything down. This would make me frustrated and I'd become disruptive.
My teacher would tell me off and I'd get so upset I'd run down to my mum's classroom and hide under her desk. I proved too much trouble and, within the year, Mum was given the sack. Shortly after that, my parents' divorce came through. We went to live near my grandmother.Mum did as much as she could to help me, but at my next school I continued to struggle.
One of the ways my new teacher punished me for bad behaviour was by locking me in a room by myself. I got so upset with her once that I pushed one of the bookcases in the classroom to the ground.
She said: Ben, you will never read or write. You will never make anything of yourself. I was seven years old. Those words made me want to give up completely. They really haunted me for years to come. I continued to be unmanageable at home. I think Mum was at her wits' end. She was so loving and caring, but trying to cope on her own was too much.
Unbeknown to me, things were about to change. Mum and Dad decided I should live with Dad and his new wife plus her two children.
I believe they both thought it was for the best he was financially more secure and it meant I could go to another school. But it was an emotional wrench. I was literally dropped off at his house one day and told I was staying with them.
I hardly knew my father, let alone the rest of his new family. I missed my mum and sister terribly. It probably took me half a year to settle down. Unlike my mother, who was so creative and warm, my father was an accountant and very strait-laced. He was also much stricter than Mum. With Dad, rules were laid down from the start.
If I did something bad, something bad would happen to me. At school I remained at the bottom. My brain just wouldn't do what it was told. Every task was tedious.
At night, Dad would sit me down to try and get me to learn my times tables. It was useless. Then, one day, I must've been about nine, I told him I wanted to buy a boat.
The next night he started working out how much money I'd have to save up to get it. This was a revelation. Applying maths to the real world suddenly made sense and I wanted to work it out for myself.
I've since realised that part of the problem with dyslexics is that there has to be a reason for us to do something. It was around this time that I first set eyes on a computer. Dad had one in his office.
They were still quite a rare sight, and I was fascinated by it. Dad saw my interest and wrote to the council to see if they'd give me one, and they did!
The next month this laptop arrived. It was a beast of a machine and weighed a ton, but to me it was magical. The computer and my brain gelled. I was glued to it. It went everywhere with me, including school. It was like I'd had blurry vision and now I had glasses.
I could see, I could apply myself, I could do anything with it! Once I realised that, there was no stopping me.
The world was at my feet I even thought I could tap into the Pentagon. By 11 I'd written my first software program and by 15 I'd established my own company. By 17 I'd made my first million. Getting that computer was the single biggest turning point in my life. Me and the computer had something in common: logic. Computers are based on pure logic and, to me, the dyslexic brain is like that too.
But the world isn't always a logical place, and for a child starting school, everything from the way we spell words to why we sit in a class adding up loads of abstract numbers doesn't seem logical.
Dyslexia has its own brilliance. It's an affliction that allows you to assimilate information differently, which allows you to think differently. And in this computer age, that's an incredibly useful tool. I was able to do that, and I just hope my story gives inspiration to others.
Interviewed by Ria Higgins.
Apr 8, 2007
Original Article in the commended TimesOnline.
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