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When I was three years old, I started going to a church
preschool. I was very unhappy there. I cried for five
straight days, eight straight hours a day. The reason
that I was unhappy there was because I had gone to
the same babysitter’s house for three years and I was
not used to going to a different place. Another reason
I was unhappy there was because my babysitter’s
granddaughter was supposed to go there and she
could not attend that week because she was sick.
At the end of the week, the preacher called my dad
and told him that when he came to pick me up that
they needed to talk. My dad came that afternoon and
the preacher told him to pull me out of the church
preschool. I started staying with a woman who was
a grandmotherly type for the remainder of the year.
I was very happy there. There were about four other
children at her house besides me. I had a hard time
communicating with some of them. The woman who
kept me could not tell that something was wrong
with me.
The next year, I started staying with a woman who
taught preschool at her house. My parents and my
grandparents were starting to realize that something
was wrong with me between age two and age three.
My grandparents babysat me and my first babysitter’s
granddaughter at my house a few times when my
babysitter had another commitment. My parents
had some close friends of theirs that brought their
daughter to my house. I had a very hard time
socializing with them. My parents took me to see my
pediatrician in Roanoke, Virginia and he said that I
was a late bloomer.