Creating child records with parent model

I am currently working on a project which is using the loopback framework. It is extremely frustrating in I feel as if I am fighting with this framework to get something extremely simple done. I simply need to create newly created associated instances when a request is received to create a parent instance with information for the children. I have gotten it working to the point where it does in fact create the children but when I try to set the property so I can return both the parent and children in the response... it doesn't actually set the children property. What is going on here???

I can't find anything in the documentation about doing something simple like this. The most I can find is retrieval of nested models. I can't seem to find anything on creating them without sending 20 requests when I have a parent with many children.

module.exports = function(Parent) {
  Parent.on('dataSourceAttached', () => {
    const create = Parent.create.bind(Parent);
    Parent.create = async (data, opts) => {
      let instance;
      try {
        instance = await create(data);
        if (data && data.children && Array.isArray(data.children)) {
          const { id: parentId } = instance;
          const children = await new Promise((resolve, reject) =>
            instance.children.create(
              data.children.map(m => Object.assign({}, m, { parentId })),
              opts,
              (err, res) => (err ? reject(err) : resolve(res))
            )
          );
          instance.children = children;
          console.log(instance.children === children); // false (wtf... #@#$#$%)
        }
        return instance;
      } catch (err) {
        // handle err
      }
    };
  });
};

via Goblinlord