Prioritizing clients over kids seems misguided if there's a conscious choice being made, but in my childhood I think I benefited a lot from benign neglect: not

Prioritizing clients over kids seems misguided if there's a conscious choice being made, but in my childhood I think I benefited a lot from benign neglect: not having everything micromanaged by my parents who let me figure things out on my own, just because they didn't feel like they had to help me the moment I have the slightest hint of a problem. Thanks to this I could pursue things that _I_ (rather than my parents) wanted to pursue, and I had vast stretches of free time to do it. I joined a volleyball team on my own, I learned electronics and programming on my own, I've read basically all of "golden age" science fiction worth reading, I got our math teacher at school to give a few of us extra lessons to prepare for the college entrance exam, etc. This autonomy had two interesting effects. On the one hand it definitely benefited me later in life, because I felt like I had a built-in direction. On the other I don't like it when people tell me what to do, particularly if they have an unearned position of power and don't really know what to do themselves, but have to "lead", by hook or by crook.