Nan Figure/Mum Figure

Thanks for all your messages, I totally agree and wouldn't take that risk unless I had seen their Facebook/CRB/ spoken to them. I absolutely am against child abuse of course and very cautious about who I speak to. Stuff like this does happen naturally yes, it's no different to meeting someone and becoming friends.

From what you say jimjamz your children already have a grandmother, your mum, and even if there's no contact with their father, is his mother still alive?

Even if you're not close to your mother could you not try to build bridges with her, rather than seeking out a stranger to have a relationship with your children.

I hope you find someone jimjamz, but do be careful! Unfortunately I don't live in your area.

jimjam This question has come up before, several times, and been discussed on the forums. The biggest important stumbling block when entering into an arrangement like this with a stranger found online that is always mentioned is the difficulty of being absolutely sure that you are not playing into the hands of someone who is on the lookout for children to abuse.

Heaven forbid that any Gransnet member should have questionable motives, but there are tens of thousands of members, and these pages are read by many non-members. If there were a pervert among them who saw your post, they could join so as to have access to your children. Would you advertise for a childminder without checking their credentials? Please be very very careful. There is a good reason for all the checks that are done on people applying to work with children.

This works both ways, of course. Someone could take advantage of a frail, possibly slightly confused older person who loved children and cheat them of their savings.

Jimjam what a thoughtful mum you are .

I'd happily be a surrogate gran (I am one already to 2 little children in my street) - but you'd have to live around the corner from me! That's because I work, I've got quite a lot of hobbies and interests, I have to drop some of those soon because my son and his wife are having their first baby and they live an hour away from us, etc etc.

Is there not some way you can perhaps find someone close to where you live?

I was also thinking that sometimes these things happen naturally - the kiddies that we are surrogate grandparents for, sort of adopted us, rather than the other way round. And my son, who's 37, his older neighbour with whom he gets on very well, said recently "He's like the son I never had".

I hope my first paragraph doesn't make me sound selfish - it's about finding enough hours in the day.

Sorry one of the sentences above is meant to say; "All please feel free to add your "input" to the thread" not inout x