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`--target {urn}` defaults to only deleting the target for safety

So the interesting part is that `--target-dependents` doesn't always work. Is this a matter of explicitly naming `dependsOn` perhaps?

yeah, I have tried with --target-dependants but it gives the same error. I have lots of dependants so listing each one is not really feasible

`--target-dependents` should just be a flag you shouldn't need to list your dependents.... are any of your dependents `protect: true` maybe?

`--target-dependents`  gives me the same error about child resources, the only way to get Pulumi to delete it is to list every child resource using the `--target` property. None of the resources are protected

ahh ok so in pulumi `children` is not necessarily the same as `dependents`. For instance a `ComponentResource` can have many children but those children don't _depend_ on the parent `ComponentResource`. Since pulumi effectively has 2 separate resource graphs. The first graph is the parent/child graph, which is the one built from the `parent` property and is used mostly for display purposes. Unless otherwise specified, the `parent` will default to the `stack` the resource belongs to or the `provider` that was used to deploy it if one was explicitly provided. The second graph is the dependency graph, which is necessarily separate because a resource can depend on more than 1 resource - so that relationship is many:1 while a parent/child relationship is 1:many. Dependencies, unless explicitly specified via the `dependsOn` property, are inferred by all of the `Output&lt;T&gt;` instances being passed around.

So if this is by chance a `ComponentResource` that you are trying to destroy, then it might be that in order to have the `--target-dependents` function as expected you may need to explicitly specify `dependsOn: this` on all of the children as well, which will make the children explicitly dependents of the containing `ComponentResource`. If what you are trying to delete is _not_ a `ComponentResource`, than maybe this understanding will help you spot which of the children doesn't actually _depend_ on the resource you're trying to delete.

ah ok, yes this is a component resource. I have made the resources the child of the component resource, but they are not dependent so that is probably the issue.