Page 20 - How Children Learn to Hate Their Parents

Contributing Factor Six: Different Parenting Styles Being a better parent who requires:
higher expectations for completing schoolwork demands for self control
reasonable restrictions regarding video games rules about cell phones
rules about social media
curfews
sleeping in one's own bed at night healthy eating and hygiene
can lead to a child rejecting you and avoiding contact with you. If one parent is very permissive and the other is even reasonably conservative this can lead to a long term estrangement. Children, once again depending on how temperamentally rebellious they might be, or if they are rebellious becuase of their age and station in life can easily conclude you
are angry, unfair, stupid, tyrannical, useless, demonic and abusive.
Some children can tolerate living in two homes with two sets of rules, and some children will accept reasonable restrictions even if their other parent is permissive. However, if we are talking about the many paths that lead to the rejection of a parent, not being a good enough "friend" to a child is certainly one of them. And the legal system can often support the notion that kids can choose not to spend time with a parent who chooses to act like a parent.
Judges and decision makers sometimes appreciate reasonably strict parenting and sometimes they don't. In an environment where children get their own advocates who feel that they are not permitted to weigh in on whether their wards should be restricted from spending time with a parent who lets them stay up until three in the morning playing multiplayer video games on a school night ("It's their way of socializing") the concept of parenting with high expectations can be lost to the notion that kids going through a divorce should be given leeway because life is tougher for them to begin with.
Since we are talking about causes and not solutions (that comes in the second module) the point of emphasis here is that this is a pathway to parental rejection.
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