It is completely possible to have a parent hardly interact with the kid and the kid still max Responsibility. Manners goes up easily too. Empathy and Conflict Resolution are the ones you generally have to work at.
The intrusive/play changing elements (from my experience)
- Phases For the most part the phases don't interfere too much, but you'll end up with kids getting leftovers and feeling sad (because they're picky eaters) or empathy and relationships dropping because they're in a mean streak, or a kid wearing a bear costume any time they can for a week.
- Mood Swings - They can make a teen too sad/embarrassed/angry to do their homework, but on the plus teens don't die from emotions.
- "Teachable moments" where your parent is either asked for advice or gets a call from school where you have to choose between 1-3 responses that will impact their character values. Some of them are logical, some are kinda nonsensical.
- Kids and toddlers making a mess (at least I think that's attached to Parenthood) if they're in particularly playful or creative moods, toddlers and teens can make a paint mess (I think mean streak can do it too) which the parents can choose to dicipline or not.
You can have the parent discipline the kids and talk through phases too, which also impacts their traits.
If none of the traits end up in either the red or the green (and you have to seriously work to have them grow up with a trait in the red) by the time they age up to young adults, they have no impact.
