I wasn't sure this day would come

Wins come in all shapes and sizes.

Last night we had a huge victory - might not seem like much to the outside world, but to me it was enormous!

L is very dyslexic - the lady who assessed him last year said his was the worst case she has seen in 25 years of assessing kids.

It took him a long time to learn to read, longer to become confident, and even longer to actually read spontaneously.

Now he's 15, he reads a couple of science magazines - both aimed at an adult market - he reads bits of role playing rules books, but never ever fiction.

Both my husband and I devour books.  Our house is full of novels, factual books, role playing books and any other sort of book you can think of.  To have a child who hated reading just felt odd.  Wrong.

Over Christmas L, his father and I listened to an audio-play, a new version of Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. L likes science fiction, in terms of films / TV programs / games, but Neverwhere isn't *quite* Sci-fi.  I wasn't sure how he would take to it.  But Gaiman is one of my favourite authors, so *I* wanted to listen to it, even if he didn't.  It took a while for L to get into it, but by the end he was thoroughly enjoying it.

We decided a few more audio plays might be a good way to introduce high quality story telling, so we've been looking for some more to listen to.

A few days ago I read "Fortunately the milk" to the younger three - it's a truly fantastic book.  It's a children's book, but well written and full of good humour.  Suffice to say it's also by Mr Gaiman, and L was in his room, sneakily listening.  After all he's far too old to be read to any more.

Last night we watched Coraline after dinner.  Another Gaiman story . . . L declared it "awesome."  I pointed out we'd seen another Gaiman film (Stardust) a while ago.

This morning L told me that Neil Gaiman was his favourite author, and that maybe he (L) might like to read some of his shorter stories . . .

And so, there we have it. A victory :) L not only has a favourite author, but also has some books he might like to read. 

You might think it a small win, insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but I'll take the smiles where I can find them thanks.

As a happy addendum, L today hit the books with renewed enthusiasm.  He feels he's getting somewhere with IGCSE biology, and has hit a patch of his IGCSE Maths that is deceptively simple.  For Mr L, right now, life is good :)