I’ll have to ask my mom when I first started learning to read. I know it was before I was 5 when I entered public school. I’d spent 2 years in the cerebral palsy center near where I grew up because I was diagnosed with cerebral palsy as a baby.
All the physical therapy and what not must’ve have successfully rewired my brain because there’s nothing visibly left of it as I was able to enter regular school. [of course it wasn’t an extreme case].
I remember they’d stick me on a ball and roll me down and I’d hit the ground, not putting my hands up to protect myself.
They had to show me there was a better way to connect with the ground than my face, and they did.
[this is probably not a native memory though but rather from stories fro when I was there, and from working with cerebral palsy kids in my 20s, when I did the same things to help other babies, toddlers, children and teens]
I was a late speaker. My sister Linda and I had our own language. She was the interpreter, being 1.5 yrs older.
First English my mom heard from me was a day she didn’t come with me to the cerebral palsy center. I was probably 3+ and she would have been 4+ but I’m not sure. I asked, mom, after speaking my strange language to her, in frustration but perfectly clear English:
“Where Lin-Lin?”
When she retells the story she adds what she wanted to say at the time – “You little shit, you knew how to speak just fine!”