We see a lot of sparkling content- but human children are just as chaotic
A mess up with some kind of artifact causes the human children to deage
Raf is 3, Miko is 5, Jack is 6, and chaos ensuessss
Oh dear oh dear, what a fabulous little idea! Time to ignore the studying I should be doing and write this instead!
The team were well aware of the fact that the humans started off as small fleshy things not too dissimilar from their sparklings capability wise. However they had never expected to actually interact with the smallest human Newsparks since they seemed to be protected so fiercely. They had seen them yes, but they had never gotten to take a good look at the small ones... that is until a rogue interaction with Cybertronian rejuvenation equipment turned the children into what the team could only describe as even frailer versions of themselves.
They panicked and called June who turned up and declared that the children had been de-aged. This left Rafael as a three year old, essentially a vorn old sparkling. Miko was five, an nearly two vorn old sparkling. And Jack was six, only being marginally older than Miko by any calculations. Looking at the toddling children, the team had no fragging clue what to do. They were far too large to even consider interacting with the children, but June couldn't exactly take them, nor could Fowler if they wanted to keep their secret.
This left the team no choice. Until Ratchet could figure out how to reverse engineer the effects, they would have to watch over the children when June couldn't. This scared everyone, mainly June.
June did give the bots a general rundown of how to care for children and provided them with necessities while Fowler created some excuses for why the children dropped off the map. However even with this knowledge, the team were all downright terrified when June left the first time. Bulkhead nearly got on his knees and begged her not to leave when Rafael started screaming. His cries went unheeded and the battle against the children began.
Optimus effectively disappeared whenever possible, either to go on patrol or do some work. He tried to steer clear of the near infant children whenever possible largely because he was scared of hurting them but also because Jack always began crying when he turned up. He took care of Rafael and Miko a handful of times, mainly by sitting around and trying to apply his knowledge of sparklings to them by giving the children toys and making sure they didn't wander off. He worked well enough and honestly wasn't the worst babysitter... right up until issues with feeding and the toilet became a thing.
He could do feeding. Just hand the small child one of the organic fuel items and Tada! Done! But the issue with the strange system cleansing the human children had going on? Nope. Optimus was not equipped for that and so promptly passed whatever child he had been given off to another of the team to handle when that became a problem. He was quietly resented for this.
Arcee was given most care over Jack simply because she was the only bot he didn't seem to get scared of. She hated this with a passion because Jack either did nothing at all, acted so childish adn unlike his usual semi-mature self that she wanted to die, or was off causing problems. There was no in-between. One moment he could be happily munching on a sandwich while watching a stupid cartoon and the next moment he could either be asking mind numbing questions or trying to fight with Miko of toy cars. He was usually soft spoken, but when he wanted to he could be a true menace. Arcee honestly preferred sparklings... especially during the times Jack needed her to take him to the restroom during the middle of the night when he stayed over on occasion. It was even worse when he threw tantrums over Rafael touching his toys and often leading him to throw them or steal them.
Arcee was not fond of the human Newsparks.
Bulkhead took primary care of Miko due to his overall gentleness with the otherwise rambunctious child. She got into anything and everything, climbed into all the vents, and very nearly gave Bulkhead a spark attack when she tried to lick chemicals off Ratchet's workstation once. He was constantly a nervous wreck when June was gone and he had to handle Miko. The little girl could and would try and put just about anything in her mouth, including but not limited to toys, crayons, dirt, that once year old chip under the couch, and Bulkhead's plating whenever he wasn't looking.
Miko was also a notorious picky eater, something that led to no end of tantrums at every meal. Optimus always noped out of the base whenever she threw her fits over her meals and Ratchet would throw on some noise cancelling devices while Bulkhead suffered. Bumblebee helped by making airplane noises and trying to soothe Miko with funny sounds from his binary vocalizer, but it rarely did much. More often than not Bulkhead would have to tell Miko that the food was alien or that it came from some very debatable source to garner her interest. Even then there were still times he just had to endure her screeching.
Nap time was by far the worst. She may have been five, but her actions spoke of needing more rest. And he had no idea how to do it and the rest of the team weren't anywhere near knowledgeable on the subject even after June's teachings. As such Bulkhead took to putting Miko is a box with a blanket and pillow that she couldn't escape from when it was naptime. He had no idea how to soothe her so he tried to sing, but if that failed he would leave the box on Ratchet's workstation and wait until she finally screamed herself to sleep.
Human Newsparks were scary.
Bumblebee and Ratchet took shared care of Rafael due to his age. Ratchet could only tolerate the toddler for intervals of ten minutes at a time and as such most entertainment management fell to Bee. The scout did what he could and tried to play with Rafael and keep him busy. He did get super invested in playing with Rafael for the first few weeks, but as all humans know, three years olds are the worst human beings on the planet. As such the novelty of Rafael wore off fairly quick and Bee turned to turning on documentaries for the boy to watch when he couldn't take it anymore.
Poor Ratchet however was left with the healthcare part of Rafael's life and as such was given the grand duty of cleaning, feeding, and laying Rafael down for nap. The first time Rafael failed to reach the restroom in time, Ratchet dropped him in a box with some food and a blanket and waited for June to get back so she could tend to him. He got a stern talking to since Rafael gained a few new rashes from being left in his own filth for too long. Ratchet still won't touch Rafael with a ten foot pole when he has such issues, but in such cases he has been instructed to call Fowler so he can handle it. Fowler hates it with a passion but deals with it anyway since Ratchet is "far too large to handle such a small cleaning procedure".
Naps are something Bee and Ratchet have begun playing grounder, flier, outlier over to see who has to do it. The loser is forced to tell Rafael that it is in fact nap time, leading the boy to scream and rush to his bed and cry himself half to sleep. Meanwhile the bot in charge of naptime management will sit and stare for over an hour since Rafael will NOT sleep unless he knows someone is there. The bot can't leave for at least an additional thirty minutes either since he can and will shoot awake and ruin all nap time attempts if they do.
Individually the children aren't hard to handle, but together they are absolutely monstrous. Ratchet has been working as hard as he is physically able to reverse everything out of pure hatred for the event as a whole. The team 100% support his efforts. They all agree that human Newsparks are FAR worse than sparklings, at least with the size difference.
