Long time in the making but it was glorious

I had a wonderful moment tonight. One that made me realize that the decisions my family has made -- and the years of trying to find patience even when it was buried way down deep -- has been well worth the effort. But before I explain my 'moment,' I have to give you some background. My 11-year-old daughter has "processing learning disabilities." Most people are familiar with dyslexia, which is one of many processing learning issues, so when things come up that she does that are a bit quirky when others are around, that's usually how I explain things. Her issues are a bit more complicated than dyslexia but our goal has always been a "happy, healthy, well-adjusted" child. It's been a good mantra to remember when things aren't going so smoothly in the academic department at our house. I share this tidbit about my child because after years and years of struggling with reading and writing, things are starting to click for her now. We opted to home school her in 3rd grade while still accessing some Resource Room hours at our local public school (we really liked her school but didn't think it was the right environment for her at the time). We evaluate our homeschooling decision every year and so far the arrangement has suited us well so we've continued (and given me a few more gray hairs to make the work, school, life juggle thing work out for everyone). I've always looked for non-traditional learning opportunities for her and created some semi-traditional ones at her learning level with other great moms, including a weekly book chat time. We've kept books on the easy side for the kids so that the titles are read for comprehension rather than simply word decoding. My girls have looked forward to every book chat meeting we've had these past three years. Pushing my child to read when she didn't want to was not my approach though. I really wanted her to love and enjoy reading like I do and not turn her off at a young age so I didn't force her to do it (well, except the coaxing I did about the weekly book chat book but that wasn't too hard because she helped to pick the titles). I discovered that she enjoyed audio books so even though she *should* have been able to read the "Magic Tree House" series in 3rd and 4th grade, I still picked them up in audio format from the library for her (along with the hard copies in hopes she might pick them up and try to read some of it). I chose more advanced books on audio as well to keep things interesting. It turned out that the whole family enjoyed audio books and we spent an entire winter season listening to the Series of Unfortunate Events in the car on the way to the ski mountain (btw, Tim Curry does a fab job with those audio books!). But a lot of people questioned my approach to audio books because she wasn't actually 'reading' them. I felt she was gaining valuable lessons in understanding plots, characters, settings and other elements of fiction without the frustration of word decoding. It worked for me and she was happy so we let the outsider comments slide. Now this year I am finding that she's picking up chapter books on her own that are more challenging than I would have thought she could handle. And this is the first year she's read books I haven't read previously (I'm a closet Young Adult fiction fan). And when I'm picking her brain about the plot, she's right on with the info (yeah, I go ahead and read the titles afterwards because she usually peaks my interest). It's taken four years to get there but she has arrived. So that brings me to tonight. She's been working on a sewing project for the Cumberland County 4-H Fashion Review and had to fill out her paperwork to enter the contest (the kids are judged on their project and then participate in a fashion show to feature it). She had to write her own commentary for the fashion show and talk about how she made her project (a fleece poncho), what pattern she used, etc. It also suggested she include her hobbies to wrap it up. Here's what she wrote:

When G. is not sewing, she’s playing with her cats, taking pictures or reading.

Holy cow -- reading? Like I said, it was a special moment for me.