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Due to their feline ancestry, Vulcans were given the ability to purr. Oftentimes an adult Vulcan would purr to soothe themselves, or when they were particularly relaxed in a safe environment. For young Vulcans, however, they would often purr for little to no reason at all. As they were children, any and all new stimuli would be welcomed, and thus the purring.
Despite being only half-Vulcan, it seemed Spock was the same, if not moreso.
Sarek found that Spock seemed to purr on a near constant basis, sometimes even while eating or doing household chores that any other young Vulcan may not find so stimulating. Amanda seemed to find it very adorable whereas Sarek wondered if it was due to his human heritage that he found so many illogical things (even for a child) worth purring over. At one point, he had mulled over the idea of perhaps taking Spock aside and explaining this to him, but ultimately decided against it. Spock would learn as he got older.
It seemed that Sarek was correct in his thoughts, for as Spock got older and began taking regular courses at the learning center, his purring dropped in consistency drastically. It was somewhat odd for Sarek at first, for it to be so sudden, but as Spock still purred when he got home with some regularity, he pushed his concern aside believing that perhaps the Vulcan instructors might have educated him a bit more on this habit (many Vulcan children purred regularly, but indeed for Spock it seemed to be more of a habit than anything) of his.
It wasn’t until a few years later when Spock was in his early teens that he stopped purring altogether, even at home. By that time, Sarek had gotten used to the decreasing amount of purring from his son and had not been concerned. Amanda, however, was, and would sometimes lament the lack of her son’s “adorable trills”. When Sarek mentioned that it was common for Vulcans to grow out of their near constant purring, Amanda responded by mentioning to Sarek that Spock had been “having troubles” at school. While the thought was initially somewhat concerning, Sarek made sure to note that Spock would need to understand and navigate the world as a half-Vulcan - there was nothing they could do. Amanda, for her part, didn’t particularly agree with his sentiment, but as she also did not seem particularly distressed by the situation in the first place, Sarek left it at that.
In hindsight, he wished he had taken those worries more seriously.
Amanda was at a conference over on Earth, and so it was Sarek’s duty to pick Spock up from the learning center that day. It had been uneventful until he walked into the center to find Spock already in the hallway with several of his classmates.
Several of his classmates who were not waiting with him, but instead piling on insult after insult upon his son, each one more illogical and biting than the last. The things they were saying were extremely concerning, but what truly disturbed Sarek was that Spock simply stood off to the side with his head down and a blank expression that he’d never seen on his son before. It was like he was used to the verbal assault his classmates flung at him with practiced ease and Sarek felt his unease multiply when he saw that while there were instructors near enough to notice the exchange, none even bothered to look in Spock’s direction.
How could the instructors at the Vulcan learning center not intervene when their own students were acting in such a disturbing and illogical way?
Moreover, how could he have completely missed that this was happening to his own son ?
Not wanting to cause a scene, Sarek stepped forward and called Spock over. As soon as his classmates noticed him, they scattered, and Spock went to Sarek’s side, relief pulsing through their admittedly weak parental bond now that he was close enough. On the way home, Sarek fought to find the words to talk to Spock, to ask him what happened, to do something , but Spock had completely closed himself off, simply asking when his mother would return from her conference.
When they got home, Sarek noticed for the first time how silent his son was now, and perhaps had been for years at this point. He no longer hummed to himself, or spoke of whatever experiments or hobbies he had going on in his spare time, or even asked Sarek question after question about his work like he used to.
What was most concerning, however, was that Spock truly no longer purred, or made any kind of Vulcan gesture of contentment at all, and Sarek now knew why, and couldn’t help but berate himself for failing his son so completely. He vowed to try and make things better for Spock, to have words with the learning academy, and to bring some sense of security back into his life in the hopes that he would hear that little noise of happiness and contentment that he illogically once thought was excessive.
But he never heard it again.