Starter before the Start

So, here with a question of opinion and worldbuilding. Thread title is kind of a clue.

We see that at age 10 a child receives or gets somehow a Pok?mon that is their Starter. Sometimes you go out and get them right from the wild, some other times the nearby Prof just happens to have three available for you to incidentally get your hands on them.

My interest here is, we usually get some idea of what the young humans do from age 0 to 10 before they start out, I mean at least school is still a thing. But what about the Starters? In particular those who are part of a Prof's collection. What do you think their life is like before they get punted into a Pok?ball to essentially be assigned to random people at random? Are they raised specifically for the task? Do they have a choice? Does a (sanctioned / official / etc) Starter need to have particular skills so they are considered fit for the role? Given that at least for a good while they will be their partner child's only or main defense against the wilderness, the dangers of the urban world, the thugs, the scammers, the old fat guys who just won't take "get up and stop blocking the road", not to mention those pesky, friendly rivals.

So have at it. What do you think a Starter's life before the Start is like?

Depends on the version of the Pokemon world.

In the world of Stairway, traditional starters given out by labs are obtained from skilled breeders specifically for the role of filling the role of being given to beginner trainers which they have been reared for. Generally traditional starters are Grass, Fire or Water typed but there are exceptions, such as Sigia's mountains where the trio is Ice, Ground and Steel. Of course, any Pokemon can technically be a starter.

I would generally use a variant of this for a Pokemon story.

Yeah I also go for the starters from skilled breeders route. This hasn't been mentioned in Foul Play but I might have a chance to later on, in Alola the starters are breed specifically as roles for the trainers beginning their journey, though there are some wild ones here and there. In SM/USUM timeline kahunas of Melemele Island and Akala Island would give out Popplio, Litten, and Rowlet most of the time while the kahunas of Ula'ula Island and Poni Island give out different Pokemon based on their island.