Opinions on Appropriate Age to Learn of Adoption

I think it's sad, and more than a little telling, that you posted this question in the Adoptee forum, presumably to get opinions from adoptees, and yet the only responses you single out for praise were made by adoptive parents. Why are adoptee voices always irrelevant? :( /

2nd try...surprised I remembered to copy first I have no idea what happened yesterday because I was tending my ailing mom, but I can hazard a pretty good guess. Once you've lived your entire life with both strangers on the street, and people you know telling you with the words used, that is further compounded by societal messages clearly telling you - you better get down and kiss the ground that you were saved from a fate worse than death (being raised in your biological family)...you get triggered by words that bring all that back into focus. It doesn't matter if you think your parents can walk on water, or they were the worst parents anyone could be unlucky enough to get - it triggers you that to society et al - you are not allowed to have any other feeling than gratitude. Perhaps that is why this everything is so beautiful about adoption theme that now is the current trend - is also very triggering, as it is just the reverse language with the same under lying meaning of what we lived... Adoption just is what it is - it isn't something magical or mystical, it's just the reason we are where we are...and just like every other human being, we to make the best of whatever cards we have been dealt in life. None the less, to answer the question posed, I think a child should ALWAYS just know they were adopted. There should never exist any time a child can remember that they did not know they were adopted. I also think mom and dad did it right - we all had our story, we all had a mother and father in the story, we knew it was quite likely we had brothers and sisters and a whole other family out there. We also knew from very early on, that being curious, wanting to get to know them was pretty normal, that if, or when, we wanted to search - they would provide any assistance we needed. No fancy words, qualifiers or modifiers existed in our home. We each had another family, not a birth family, just a family. From all the adoptees I've spoken to who weren't told at a time when they would have always known, or weren't told at all - only one who found out in her senior years, wished she had never been told at all. Being told later, even in childhood was harder to varying degrees, than those who had always known and don't remember the reveal. Parents who wait (or don't intend to tell) are LYING to their children, deliberately, and I think that is just plain wrong...and that goes for donor conceived to...no human being wants to be lied to, especially when it evolves around who you are at the core... D

My brother and I were told from day one. Adoption to us was as normal as putting on boots and playing in the snow. I may not know who I look like. But I sure know who I trust!