The provided source is an essay by Michelle de Havilland, CEO of BlackGate and founding partner of MD Coach (www.MDCoach.co.uk), that explores the concept of parentification—the premature assignment of adult emotional and practical responsibilities to children. De Havilland argues that parentification is an insidious form of psychological damage, explaining that children's brains lack the neurological capacity to manage complex adult issues like emotional regulation or financial crises, citing research that the prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until around age 25. The text thoroughly outlines both emotional and practical forms of parentification and details the lasting psychological impacts on adults, including anxiety, difficulty with boundaries, and impaired identity formation. Finally, the essay addresses the challenges parentified adults face when transitioning into appropriate elder care roles for their aging parents, providing coaching frameworks for establishing boundaries and separating past trauma from present adult responsibilities.

The MD Coach PlayBook article written by Michelle de Havilland and available to read for free on www.MDCoach.co.uk/Playbook provides an extensive analysis of "weaponised incompetence," which the author defines as the strategic claim of inability or the deliberate poor performance of a task to evade future responsibility. The text examines this phenomenon in both personal relationships, particularly marriages where it creates a parent-child dynamic and resentment, and professional settings, where it harms team performance and accountability. The author suggests that this behaviour is driven by factors including laziness, gender socialisation, ego protection, and power dynamics, and offers a coaching framework recommending readers stop rescuing and instead enforce clear boundaries and natural consequences to dismantle the manipulation. Ultimately, the piece argues that competence is a matter of dignity and choice, not just ability, and calls for societal changes to challenge the rewarding of helplessness.

Based on an extensive white paper titled "Bricks, Belonging, and Human Behaviour in Real Estate," written by Michelle de Havilland, CEO of BlackGate and founder of MD Coach, from her 25 years of global property development experience. The document argues that successful real estate development hinges on understanding fundamental human psychology, specifically the need for belonging and safety, rather than just focusing on architecture and finance. Michelle presents 27 lessons across three parts—Fundamentals, Contemporary Shifts, and Emerging Challenges—emphasising that developers must design for the actual, evolving needs of diverse occupants, such as single women, solo dwellers, single parents, and remote workers, often ignored by traditional, standardised building models. Crucially, the paper stresses that failing to account for cultural nuances, emotional sustainability, and ethical design practices leads to commercial failure and poorly performing communities.