Foster care

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I just found out a few days ago that my mom doesn't know what my first words were or at what age I began talking... and then we realized... I probably spoke my first words when I was in foster care, meaning that I would have been between the ages of 9 mos and 18 mos. That's a pretty big range of time, really. Which ages are considered normal?

Was anyone else in foster care at a very young age? I don't even know who my foster parents were. Would I have bonded with them as parents in that period of time? Could that experience have caused many of the social anxiety symptoms I have today or made them worse than they otherwise would have been?

I am afraid to talk to a psychologist about this stuff because I want to adopt in the future, and I'm afraid they won't let me if they think I'm mentally defective... and it's my dream to be a mother but I'm not so interested in having biological children. Increasingly, the ideas of pregnancy and passing on my genes are unappealing to me.

But could my desire for adopted children rather than biological ones be a result of some subconscious effect of being a foster child? I wonder that as well... I have always wanted to adopt, and I have noticed that most people view adoption only as a last result in case they can't get pregnant...

I don't know which age is considered normal but to be honest i don't see adoption as a last resort myself, since i'm not very excited about passing my genes on either, i do want to be a father one day if i can, and have a girlfriend, but i was diagnosed really late so if i do pass my genes on i would notice it faster then my own parents did which would save my kid a lot of problems, and sorry i've never been in foster care but i wanted to reply because i don't see adoption as a last resort like i said before :)

And hello by the way ^^ And from your post count i see that you're not super new but welcome anyway :) I like using smileys, sorry :o

Before you decide not to speak to a psychologist about these issues that are concerning you, it would be a good idea to find out whether your fears about the therapy being "used against you" are realistic. Not knowing where you live, I can't hazard a guess. Here, in Pennsylvania, the mee fact that someone was seeking therapy would not be seen as negative, especially if it were to help the person make sure s/he was making a good decision before adopting a child. In most situations, the fact of, and content of therapy is private anyway. So check on this before you just decide you can't do it.

As to the normal age for starting to speak - 9-18 months is it. It is a wide range, but different kids are different. Some kids don't say their first word until age two, and that is still considered normal, but it is late.

It's nice to see someone else feels this way.

I've worked with a lot of foster and adopted kids. A lot of times they had a lot of issues, not necessarily because they were in foster homes, but because of the reasons they were and just what comes with that territory - changing homes, bad (abusive, neglectful, etc) biological or foster parents and siblings, etc. Personally I want to have one or two kids of my own, and then foster and/or adopt, not because fostering isn't my first choice, but because I just want both my own kids and to help others

[quote="mrspotatohead"
Was anyone else in foster care at a very young age? I don't even know who my foster parents were. Would I have bonded with them as parents in that period of time? Could that experience have caused many of the social anxiety symptoms I have today or made them worse than they otherwise would have been? [/quote]
You most likely bonded with them to some extent, depending on how good of parents they were. If they were bad parents then the experience could've caused or exacerbated some of your problems. I don't know the extent of your problems, but I think they would've had to be pretty horrible people to cause or significantly increase many problems in an otherwise normal child, but it is possible.

~K