hypothesis: Spartans are actually really good with kids
I only say this because they were never really talked to as kids themselves. Even when they were first conscripted, Halsey and Mendez spoke to them as “trainees” with a degree of professionalism that six year-olds rarely, if ever, command with adults.
And this is anecdotal but my experience has been that when speaking to kids like they are adults with knowledge I want access to, they love it a lot. It’s super exciting to teach older people stuff because they almost never get the chance to do that. And the Spartans, having been almost totally removed from any social setting except for military ones, would probably just talk to kids like small, noisy adults.
And I mean, I’ve taught kids how to use scissors, what the word “medium” means, and had a lion described to me as “a big cat with a beard around its head”. Kids would provide the exact correct amount of earnest chaos that Spartans would be able to deal with from civilians. Adults are distrustful and angry and have access to social systems that the Spartans don’t, but kids haven’t had any of that cemented for them yet so they live in a constant state of open wonder and a lack of judgement that would make Spartans feel waaaaay more comfortable than any adult they could possibly speak to.
Time's Vengeance 