Now that we've met the parents

 (Sherlock Meta by ibelieveinmycroft)

Anonymous: I know you need time to mull it over, and I'm unlikely to be the first to ask this: what do you think of Mycroft and Sherlock's childhood, now that you've met their parents? No wonder they are constantly upsetting mummy!

ibelieveinmycroft: I loved that moment! They’re so delightfully ordinary, it makes their boys seem even stranger. I hope they crop up again at, say, a family dinner, so we can see the family dynamic.

Mark Gatiss once described the Holmes brothers as growing up like “hothouse flowers,” and I think this depiction of their parents and the revelations in this episode sit rather well with that. As Mycroft and Sherlock both thought Sherlock an idiot until they met other children, and Mycroft is seven years Sherlock’s senior, they must have been left on their own for a long time. Home-schooled, is likely then, and their home is probably quite remote. I’m still clinging on to the image of the rural country manor, with two mad, brilliant boys rattling around inside it, pouring through the books in their library, roaming the woods and conducting experiments on insects, educating themselves and each other rather than deigning to be taught.

Their parents allowed, even encouraged this, for years before trying to get their children to socialise more, and meet other children. That Sherlock was old enough to remember the event suggests that he was at least three or four and, thus, Mycroft had been allowed to remain alone for around ten or eleven years. It certainly seems that for a very long time they had no one else.

I can see what upset Mummy - she had a rather odd set of boys that sprung from nowhere. Mycroft was long a cuckoo in the nest, until Sherlock came along. I think it likely that their parents never really understood their slightly odd sons, but accepted them. Though the constant bickering can’t have been easy to live with!

Their parents certainly loved them, and Sherlock and Mycroft evidently love their parents too. Who else could get the British Government himself to suffer through Les Mis other than a devoted mother!