Beyoncé's Mom Tells All: How a Girl 'Nobody Liked' Overcame Academic Challenges and Survived a Near-Death Experience

In her new book Matriarch, Tina, 71, recalled Beyoncé's first week at a "little toddler school" at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, where she took a break from beauty school to check on her daughter.

Tina's heart sank as she watched the other kids laughing together on the playground, but there was her daughter – all alone.

She wrote: "Then I saw her. It was the saddest sight: Beyoncé was alone at the swing set, pushing an empty swing.

"A little girl stopped by me, pausing to catch her breath from running with her friends. I said, 'You know, I think that girl over there is looking for someone to play with. She’d push you on the swing.'

"She looked over quick, then right at me with the clarity that preschoolers have. 'I don’t like her.'"

After Tina told the little girl Beyoncé was "very nice," the girl replied: "No one likes her."

Later, Tina found out her daughter wasn't pushing an "imaginary friend" on the swing – she was using the alone time to practice her singing as a young star.

She wrote: "Later that day, I asked if it had been an imaginary friend in the swing. No, Beyoncé explained. It was just something to do while she sang to herself in her head.

"Nobody liked her, she stated, just as matter-of-fact as that girl. I thought it was because she was too shy, and I didn’t understand that it was discernment that kept her quiet in new spaces.

"I wrestled with this: How could I help this child, who at home was this huge personality always singing and joking, stop hiding her light from the world?"

The harsh words didn't just come from Beyoncé's classmates at the time, however.

Tina recalled how one of her daughter's teachers had bluntly branded her as "slow" as a young child, explaining: "She said, as if this were an offhand remark: 'You know, I know you needed to start Beyoncé young. But she is struggling.'

"I heard the 'needed to' and felt the hair on my neck stand up. I did nothing with my child for my convenience, but what mattered more was that this was the first I heard she was struggling."

She continued: "I started to talk, genuinely concerned, and she cut me off. 'I think she needs to be held back,' she said. 'And I think she might be a little slow.'"

Tina was "heated" by the remark, but the teacher dismissed her reaction. Tina, however, knew the teacher had "given up" on Beyoncé and vowed not to let anyone "write off her child."

Elsewhere in her memoir, Tina also recalled a near-death incident during Beyoncé's childhood that made her "see how fragile this existence could be."

She said the heater in the wall of Beyoncé's room had caught fire, and they scrambled to rush out of the house and call the fire department.

Recounting the terrifying moment, she wrote: "Standing out on our street, looking back at our home, I held my child and watched the flames reach a small spot on the roof.