Annie’s Story

My family is a little bit different. My dad is really my stepdad. He married my mom when I was just a baby, and then she left. I also have a little brother who is really my stepbrother because he is the son of one of my dad’s older children. He left too.

 Everybody said I was having trouble fitting in and that’s why I should come to Rainbows. I didn’t feel like I belonged there. I sat by myself and wouldn’t talk to anyone. The teachers and volunteers would come and sit with me and talk to me, but I would just ignore them.

One of the things I’ve always liked to do is clean, so I would wander around the playroom wiping tables and sweeping the floor. The teachers and volunteers noticed, so Marilyn, who worked in the kitchen, invited me to come in and help her wash dishes. She gave me a pair of rubber gloves and an apron and then let me fill the sink with water and detergent. Suddenly Rainbows was fun.

Marilyn asked me if I would like to be her assistant. Every day when I was at Rainbows, I would help Marilyn in the kitchen and she became my friend. It was really easy to talk to her, making it easier to talk to some of the other kids when we were eating snacks.

The other volunteers helped me, too by inventing games that involved cleaning and included the other kids. Because I was a good sweeper, the volunteers created our own game of curling. We played games where we sorted dishes by colour. I was happy helping the other kids stocking and tidying the shelves in our “store.”

As time went by, I still helped Marilyn in the kitchen, but not so much. I started to get interested in some of the other things that were going on in the playroom, like making purses out of scrap material, knitting, playing nurse and restaurant, connecting the circuits on a circuit board, and mixing up slime. And while I was doing all those things, I was making friends and even made one special friend.Outside of Rainbows I fit better than I used to, but Rainbows is still the place I fit best.