Getting to know you - Part 1

My first question was: what is there to know? Firstly, they are kids and their characters and personalities have not really formed yet. It’s not like they are fully developed humanoids with traits, likes, dislikes, strong opinions about politics, sports, religion, right? Secondly, we’ve known them since day one and any weird thoughts or habits that might have accidentally formed would surely have had to run by us, their parents, for approval before becoming fully ingrained in their neural circuitry. Lastly, aren’t they exact DNA copies of us? Copied genome by genome, cell by cell, to become the little rascals they are, basically smaller versions of ourselves?

Unfortunately those assumptions are somewhat wrong, flawed, thrown out the window. Once your children begin to grow, as they tend to, you begin to have certain inklings that they might actually be standalone beings on their own. Once separated from their mothers upon birth, they spawn their own mutations of attributes and values, like objects ejected from the parent left to absorb functional and capability physiognomies from the ambient surroundings in some weird, terrifying but wonderful and amazing way.

They don’t like what we like. They like what we do not. They don’t do as they are told, neither as they see. They support other unknown football clubs and fancy ridiculous luminous colours which would frighten the most outlandish nightclub owner. Some of them have fetishes for all kinds of stationery, make friends easily with strangers or just love composing Chinese songs which don’t make sense.

These are our children, and we thought it would be straightforward.