I have always loved the comparison of learning to walk with any other learning in life. I very much see learning as something we are naturally made to do. We will not all pick up the same things nor learn in the same way, but whether we like it or not we are all learning all the time.
A baby learns to walk not by official lessons and textbook reading, but by exploration and being allowed to fail over and over until they get it right. Babies have different ways of starting out, some crawl on hands and feet, some cruise, some just get up and walk, and they do it at different times some at 8 months, others at 16 months or even later. However they approach walking, all of the ones physically able to will eventually figure it out because they see most people around them walking and are allowed to explore it in their own way. When they finally manage to get on 2 feet they will fall a lot. It takes time to work out balance and get comfortable with walking, yet there are few parents who would criticize every misstep or fall. Overwhelmingly, parents are supportive and excited that their baby is trying. They don't focus on how many times the child has fallen, but count the steps taken. They focus on the positive and almost ignore the failures - even though the failures far outweigh the successes. When a parent is concerned or upset that their baby isn't walking at the 'right' time, they are reassured by grandparents, doctors, friends, etc that there is a range for a reason and it will be ok. How I wish society approached education and learning in general this way.
When it came to reading and writing, I ended up taking a count-the-steps-taken approach with my dyslexic who has been free to work on reading and writing as she wants for almost her entire education. I say almost because we didn't start homeschooling with that approach in mind. I had been a preschool teacher with the nifty little college certificate, so I "knew" how to teach. Ariana struggled with writing her letters as the lessons wanted, so we switched to other games and lessons and then others still to try and get letter names and sounds covered. The problem was, she could not 'get it' in a reasonable amount of time (on top of being dyslexic she is also a perfectionist and doesn't like to be wrong). After a few weeks of both of us almost ending up in tears as we struggled through the letters and numbers, I realized I either had to give up on homeschooling altogether or change my approach. I suppose it helped that Ariana was in a Girl Scout troop of mostly unschoolers, so they were very supportive of a different approach. I backed off, read to her every day, read on my own for pleasure (as did her dad) and waited for her to show an interest in reading and writing. Due in part to the damage done in the beginning, she didn't approach me with reading or writing for years, but she made progress on her own.
As she had more interest in what she saw in the books we read, she started writing little notes or stories of her own. First it was mostly pictures to convey what she was trying to say, then she would sound out words and spell them very badly (a lot of the odd spelling came from a little girl we babysat who was not afraid of being wrong - which rubbed off on Ariana a bit). I was so excited that she was writing that I didn't worry about the spelling when she proudly showed me her work. I suppose the written notes that she would deliver to her siblings and to me and her dad started when she was about 7. The homeschool Girl Scout troop occasionally had assignments where the girls would present their gathered information however they chose, whether through drawings, acting it out, writing it or just talking about it. So Ariana began adding writing to her pictures for those activities as well. She picked up things from the older girls (or group had girls from age 5 to 12 altogether) when they worked in groups, and no one worried about correct grammar or spelling - the girls figured it out through trial and error as they read what they wrote to each other and to the group. By 10 Ariana still spelled things pretty badly (though much improved over her 7 year old spelling), but she was starting to ask how certain words were spelled so that she could get it down correctly.
About that same time (age 10) Ariana discovered audio books and was so fascinated with the stories that she started picking up books to try and figure them out (she had the basics down from writing practice). Her vocabulary improved and things like sentence structure and story-telling really blossomed. Now at 13 she adds to a private journal regularly, always has something she is reading as well as something she is listening to. Recently she finished Ender's Game (on audio) and really enjoyed it and understood the more complicated themes within the book. When I am done reading Ender's Shadow I will pass it along to her in case she wants to read it. Ariana's spelling has also improved over time. She cares about what she writes and wants the reader to know what she is saying, so she takes her time and if necessary asks how to spell certain words. She rarely misspells a word and while her penmanship and writing speed could use work, she really has figured out the basics and enjoys writing - though she is probably writing at a bit lower level than her public school peers (not knowing kids her level in public school makes it hard to tell).
When I compare that to my sister's experience with dyslexia in public school it is like night and day. My sister was facing being moved to the special education classes for 2nd grade because she hadn't learned to read yet (there were no programs for dyslexia then), so her 1st grade teacher worked with her after school and my mom paid hundreds of dollars a month (that we didn't have) to a tutor to help my sister learn to read. She made it, though barely and she never liked reading or writing. She struggled through high school and got Bs and Cs with the occasional A (usually for art, drama or other creative subjects), and only in her mid 20s discovered that she liked reading books. She told me she was 23 before she willingly picked up a book and finished it just because she wanted to.
I knew I didn't want to push my oldest into the kind of frustration and damage caused by what my sister went through, so I let go. I let go of what I assumed to be important in her education and trusted that she would get it at some point. I did my best to provide an environment where reading and writing were used everyday in useful ways as well as for pleasure, so Ariana saw and experienced the value of reading and writing everyday. Just as with walking, she saw it was important and strived to figure it out because of the example she saw around her not just from her parents, but from friends and in the world at large.
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