In the research of my extended highland family the sharing of children crops up often. My mother was sent to live with her father's sister and husband before she was seven for adoption. She stayed for more than a year but ran away when the summer holidays from school came round. She missed her brothers and sisters. She was fourth but there would have been seven children in the family by the time they lent her out. Sisters went to stay with other aunts, sometimes for a few years, brothers too went often for the summer as the older children who were in lodgings in term time near the middle and high schools would be home then. Tina