An Unexpected Bonus of Having Children.

There are good and bad sides to having kids. It is deeply fulfilling to be a parent (though not in an all-encompassing way,) but it can also be almost equally frustrating. Nothing will test your patience like having to give the same instructions every day for months on end until it becomes habit. Teaching siblings how to communicate with each other rather than bicker is painfully slow. Teaching them to request not demand is exhausting. Teaching them to appreciate what they have already got rather than what they want is a trial. Keeping your eyes on the prize of creating adults-you'd-want-to-know can seem an almost unreachable goal.
 
That said, yesterday I realised one awesome aspect of having kids. My boys like to talk. I mean really like to. Mostly about the subjects that specifically interest them (Hero: empires and the Ottomans, Rafey: Mario, farting) but also about random crap. Yesterday I made myself some coffee and reached for the sugar to put in it. That was weird. It's been nearly a decade since I drank coffee with sugar, and even then it was just for a few months. I don't like sweet coffee. Even unasked for decorative syrup, drizzled on top of a coffee-shop latte can be too sweet for me (I have to spoon it off quickly and pretend it's a separate thing.) Obviously I needed to alert the rest of the family to this oddity. Here's how my husband reacted:

"Huh."

 When pushed to expand his thoughts a little he postulated that maybe I had been eating too much Haribo candy and my brain was now turning into a jelly baby. Or maybe I was turning into a jelly fish. It was enriching stuff.
 

Not so my children. They spent a good fifteen minutes pondering this strange dilemma. Questioning every aspect of it - when was the last time I had sugar in my coffee, why did I stop, which hand did I use to reach for the sugar. They were genuinely interested!   They didn't come up with any ideas as to the 'why' at all but man did they make this non-event in my life feel validated!

They may wake up way too early, and ask me to pass them things that are already in front of them, and never ever put their socks in the laundry basket without being reminded, but they are interested!

Note. I fully realise that 'interested' and 'interesting' are two entirely different things.