When one parent thinks the child is being spoiled

“You're just too soft.” When parents disagree about whether a child needs limits or understanding, everyone suffers, including the child. Here's a way out of the blame question and towards a shared plan.

It's one of the hardest situations a family can go through, and it's rarely discussed openly. One parent sees a child who needs more understanding and a different kind of support. The other sees a child who lacks consistency, and a partner who is far too lenient. “You're spoiling him.” “You're too hard.” Both love the child. Both want the best. And yet they stand in each other's way, often anew every evening.

The bitter part: the child senses this conflict precisely. They notice that they trigger arguments between their parents, and that increases the stress that was often the trigger of the behaviour in the first place. A cycle forms.

Why “more strictness” often fails here

With neurodivergent children, classic toughness frequently doesn't work, and sometimes it even makes things worse. That's not down to too little discipline, but to the fact that the behaviour has a different cause than in a child who is simply testing limits. A child who falls apart in the supermarket is rarely “badly raised”. They're often simply flooded by stimuli that others barely notice.

The factual basis matters too: neurodivergence is not caused by spoiling. ADHD and autism are strongly hereditary, with a heritability of around 74 and about 80 percent respectively, and laid down in early brain development. No parenting style in the world creates them, and none, however strict, raises them away. Knowing this relieves both parents, because it takes the question of blame out of the room.