I don't think children should call the shots in their parents' personal lives either, but sometimes parents allow them to. Sometimes, parents make bad calls or can't stand to see their kid any kind of emotional pain and over-cater to their wants. And sometimes dealing with the behavior and acting-out (slipping grades, trips to the principal's office, fake illnesses, temper tantrums, swearing/yelling, breaking stuff) gets so difficult that parents feel like they can't take it anymore and need to do whatever they can to try and get their kid back on track. My (now former) T actually went through this with her own daughter. They tried family therapy, they tried a vacation together, they tried a million things to get her daughter and her new partner to get along, and nothing worked. The tantrums were so bad she said life was miserable and only one person was expendable-- the partner (not the daughter). She said she did love her partner, but it was just too hard. She couldn't keep waking up every morning in a battle zone. She said sometimes love isn't enough.