[kinghtown]

Well, sure but I’m advocating to trust your instincts in terms of their general health and well-being. Abuse or gross neglect are entirely different matters. Abusive parents are probably not going to be online doing heavy research on what is the optimum thing to do as a parent. They probably just feel tired and bitter about their children, or worse.

A lot of modern, new wave parenting to me feels an awful lot like meddling in natural child development. Like too much of a good thing, helicopter parenting.

[exporectomy]

I'm talking about hardly visible emotional abuse and neglect, not some extreme criminal activity that only really bad people do. For example, not loving your child and going through the motions of looking after it without really caring. Or inconsistently responding to it with dismissal sometimes and kindness other times so it can't really trust you and feel secure. That can lead to harmful attachment styles as an adult.

[krageon]

This is a broader issue, one where it is so extremely unlikely that you will make progress you have to take a step back and think about what the realistic goals for you actually are.

That came out way more depressing than I expected and I'm not sure what conclusion I was going to arrive at.