Has anybody noticed with their bio kids and step kids that there are particular environmental conditions that they are more likely to talk and be polite. For a while now my sons have got in the habit of deciding to chat about nine o clock at night. The young girls will have gone to bed so they won’t be interrupted, and if I’m sitting at the dining table on my own having a cup or tea, they will make bedtime snacks pull up a chair and by some form of miracle they will strike up a conversation lasting twenty minutes to an hour. I’m just commenting because it can be a challenge getting more than two words sentences occasionally, and I think that some but not all step parents may be accidentally confusing random quietness for something else.