# Select Children & Deselect Parent?
**URL:** https://forum.highend3d.com/t/select-children-deselect-parent/3972
**Category:** Maya
**Tags:** mel
**Created:** [January 10, 2005, 8:25pm UTC](https://forum.highend3d.com/t/select-children-deselect-parent/3972 "2005-01-10T20:25:52Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@liz](https://forum.highend3d.com/u/liz)
#### Post date: [January 10, 2005, 8:25pm UTC](https://forum.highend3d.com/t/select-children-deselect-parent/3972/1 "2005-01-10T20:25:52Z")
What's the best way of selecting all the children of your selection, then deselect the original selection/parent?
One more step beyond:
```
select -hi ;
```
TIA!
---
### Author:  [@joojaa](https://forum.highend3d.com/u/joojaa)
#### Post date: [January 10, 2005, 9:25pm UTC](https://forum.highend3d.com/t/select-children-deselect-parent/3972/2 "2005-01-10T21:25:57Z")
Best as a thing thats not defined in most cases! Define what you mean by children transforms only or shapes, intermediate objects or what? Anyway read the entry for list relatives
listRelatives -ad `ls -sl`; //return all descendants.
listRelatives -ad -type transform `ls -sl`; // transforms only (most people dont know or care that shapes exist)
Anyway you could prettymuch filter this list after the fact.
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### Author:  [@liz](https://forum.highend3d.com/u/liz)
#### Post date: [January 10, 2005, 10:25pm UTC](https://forum.highend3d.com/t/select-children-deselect-parent/3972/3 "2005-01-10T22:25:59Z")
The collision system for the game engine is determined by directly childing mesh/shape cubes to the game mesh.
For example, you have a table mesh. You then bind a cube that surrounds that mesh to act as the collision area, instead of the more complicated table mesh. These bounding boxes are stack down the tree.
Currently, there's a script that toggles some game options. It's hard to quickly tell what's been modified in the whole scene, however.
A solution would be to have the children change color in the hypergraph. This can be done by changing the state (making it non-interactive, similiar to a layer toggle).
To make it more automated, I was attempting to run the game option script, then have it only select the children (collision bounding) and toggle their state for a template color change.
Debugging the scene is quicker when you can immediately spot which collision boundings have been modified by the color change.
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### Author:  [@liz](https://forum.highend3d.com/u/liz)
#### Post date: [January 10, 2005, 11:16pm UTC](https://forum.highend3d.com/t/select-children-deselect-parent/3972/4 "2005-01-10T23:16:11Z")
Looks like I've got something here:
global proc ToggleColor ()
{
string $selected[] = `ls -sl`;
string $current = "";
string $object = "";
if ($selected[0] != "")
{
for ($current in $selected)
{
// Test current selection for transform objects
string $list[] = `listRelatives -c -pa -typ transform $current`;
if ($list[0] != "")
{
for ($object in $list)
toggle -te ($object); // Send current tranform object to setRenderAttr proc
}
else
{
toggle -te ($current); // Send current tranform object to setRenderAttr proc
}
}
}
else
{
error "Nothing selected.";
}
}
---
### Author:  [@badmanjam](https://forum.highend3d.com/u/badmanjam)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2014, 5:54am UTC](https://forum.highend3d.com/t/select-children-deselect-parent/3972/5 "2014-05-20T05:54:50Z")
Ha! I've got it!
I want to Delete all the children of selected objects:
string $shapes[] = `listRelatives -ad`;
delete $shapes;
Done!