Mum who let sons play video games at night loses custody to father: Judge attacks her 'permissive parenting' style



Father complained his ex-wife was not acting like a parent

Family court judge agreed and said she had 'failed' her sons, 11 and 14

The father was given custody after submitting plans to set boundaries

Ruling was made in the family division of the High Court in London

None of the people involved have been named



Lost custody: The unidentified woman will have her two sons, 11 and 14, taken away following the ruling

A mother said to have harmed her two sons by ‘permissive parenting’ has been stripped of the right to bring them up.

The brothers, 11 and 14, will now live with their father so they will be given ‘the guidance and boundaries appropriate for teenage boys’.

A judge made the order after hearing that the boys, who lived with their mother after their parents’ break-up, were staying up late, missing school, late for classes and neglecting their homework.

The mother spent much of the day in bed while her sons were left to play computer games, Judge Laura Harris heard. She said the mother was ‘complacent about the educational issues and minimised concerns about lateness, homework and general progress’.

Adding that she thought it likely that the mother was depressed, the judge said: ‘She does spend hours under the duvet, on the phone or using her iPad, and the children are left to their own devices. It seems to me to be likely that they are spending a lot of time playing on their own or on their Xboxes.

‘She does have a very permissive style of parenting, and I accept the father’s evidence that she is more like a friend than a parent.

‘I am satisfied that there is a failure to provide proper guidance and boundaries essential for the social and emotional development of these pre-adolescent and adolescent boys.’

The case is the latest in which separated and divorced mothers have been criticised by judges for neglecting the welfare of their children while encouraging hostility towards the father.

Judge Harris, sitting in the Family Division of the High Court, said in her ruling – which has been published with the parents and children un-named – that the 41-year-old mother had ‘significantly failed’ her sons.

After hearing from a senior teacher and a court-appointed social worker, she said that the older boy ‘is not achieving his educational potential, which is harmful to his future prospects’.



Ruling: The case was heard in the family division of the High Court, which sits in the Royal Courts of Justice in London, pictured

Target: The mother even accused judge Laura Harris, pictured, of being biased towards her ex-husband

The judge added that there was a risk the younger brother would ‘go the same way’.

The boys’ behaviour ‘shows a lack of discipline and structure,’ the judge said. ‘Although the court must be tolerant of different standards of parenting, I consider the permissive parenting in this case has caused the children harm.’

Judge Harris said the mother deeply resented the father, who she believed had begun an affair before their marriage broke up in 2002, and who she believed had failed to pay properly for his sons’ upbringing.

She was awarded custody in 2002, and in 2004 a court ruled that the children should live with their mother while having weekend contact with their father.

In 2012, the father asked a court for custody after repeatedly complaining that he had been denied contact with them. Judge Harris said the father ‘has, in my view, demonstrated far better insight into the needs of his boys’.

‘He is much more in favour of structure, boundaries and discipline, and I can understand why the boys might baulk at that.’

Judge Harris said the mother had manipulated the boys into hostility towards their 43-year-old father and that her hatred of him was ‘almost pathological’.