Why do you think it was weird?

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My grandmother died in 1997 and my grandfather passed away in 1991. They were my grand parents on my dads side and both died of cancer unfourtantly

I was looking through some old family pictures and I noticed a little girl was in photos with my grandparents (one picture she was sitting on my grandmothers lap). My grandad always wanted a girl but instead he had 3 sons. My grandma on the other hand preferred boys.

More to the point I asked my mum who this little girl was in the photos and she replied in a disapproving way "oh she was some child of your grandfathers friends your grandparents took a shinning to" I then said to my mum I was surprised by this and my mum then remarked "I know it's weird"

In your opinions and from my mums point of view why do you think that was a weird thing to do on my grandparents part?

I think your mother just didn't have any other word to describe the relationship. And maybe your mother can't relate to the idea of voluntarily acting like a second parent to an unrelated child.

I don't think it is weird. Unexpected, maybe, looking through old family photos; but not weird.

People don't usually "commandeer" other people's children, especially when they've had their own.

Perhaps also there were some other things going on regarding the little girl, that were either "inappropriate" or suspected to be inappropriate.

Or perhaps your mother thought the kid(s) they "should" be doting on should be their actual grandchild(ren).



Edited to add: Or you could ask your mum what she meant.

I don't think it's a bad thing. I'm glad the girl had the approval of your grandparents. I don't see anything weird about this,

When I was a child, I tended to like people (other than my parents) better than my parents.

I have a very old photo of my parents and my eldest sister, plus a completely unrelated boy. The boy was a resident of a local orphanage. My parents used to have a couple of the kids over for playdates some weekends, kind of like an extremely temporary foster situation I guess. I don't really understand the arrangement, but apparently you could do that in those days. I don't know if they were considering actually full-time fostering or what -- we were already four kids of their own. But before I was born they had these kids in their lives. They did it out of the goodness of their hearts as they were heavily involved in charity and such.

There was no monkey-business or inappropriate activity; they really were just trying to give some orphan children a family experience just for a while. This was England in the 1960s.

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Sometimes saying, "i know, it's weird." is a way of acknowledging an unusual situation, but also attempting to end the conversation at the same time. Maybe your mom didn't know all of the details, or did, but didn't feel like getting into a long discussion. Either way, her statement could have been validating that your curiosity was warranted, not meaning that the situation was weird in a bad way.