Three More Grandchildren

Yes, three, all at once! Aged 18, 15 and 10. A boy and two girls. How did this happen?

Apart from my three natural children Jim and I adopted another child; a mixed race girl aged 11 months. This was in 1963.

I think we were both rather idealistic and a bit naïve. Our previous two children had given us no trouble and we assumed that given the same conditions of love, comforts and attention an adopted child would be no different. We were wrong.

From the start she was nothing like our other two in temperament, development or behaviour. We struggled and, I think, made many mistakes – at least I did. I couldn’t believe that I couldn’t get it right.

In 1965 we had another ‘natural’ (for want of a better word) child, another boy. He was no trouble either, being a very placid child - he still is.

By the time Ellen (not her real name) was in secondary school her behaviour was causing concern outside the family situation. She was the first candidate for the ‘sin bin’ at her school because of her disruption in class and we were having real problems ourselves. We sought professional help and this eventually resulted in her attending a school for maladjusted children and subsequently she went into care.

Our lives now returned to something like normal although I think that the previous trauma has had a lasting effect on the relationship that I have with the remaining three children.

We continued to see Ellen at intervals until she left school when she went to London to work. We lost contact for a few years and then she rang us out of the blue and we exchanged visits. She had matured into a pleasant young woman and we got on well. She told us that she had a West Indian boyfriend and that she was about to visit his family in Jamaica. She said that she would contact us on her return. That was about 1987. We heard nothing.

I made several attempts to find her over the years but knew that if she had married or was living in Jamaica I was going to find it difficult.

A few weeks ago I was messing about on Ancestry.co.uk and turned up her name as having married in 1990 in London. I now had what I believed was her married name and started searching. When I had an address I wrote asking if she was the Ellen I thought she was. I heard nothing for six weeks and assumed that I had it wrong. Then I got an email during the time we were in France telling me that she was our Ellen, that she was married – now separated and had three children.

We are now emailing each other trying to catch up on all the missing years. It is so exciting. I am looking forward to meeting up with my new grandchildren when we can arrange it.

I hope that we can make a better relationship together now we are both older and wiser.