Top Stories - Posted by Karl Bates-Duke on Thursday, January 27, 2011 18:14 - 4 Comments 
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Impulsive kids at risk for debt, drug abuse
Children who scored lower on measures of self-control as young as age 3 were more likely to have health problems, substance dependence, financial troubles, and a criminal record by the time they reached age 32. (Credit: iStockphoto)
DUKE (US) — Children who struggle with self-control early in life are more likely to face health and financial problems—and even have a criminal record—as adults.
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The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
The study results are based on feedback from teachers, parents, and observers who assessed levels of self-control in more than 1,000 New Zealand children, who also rated themselves. The assessment included measures like “low frustration tolerance, lacks persistence in reaching goals, difficulty sticking with a task, over-active, acts before thinking, has difficulty waiting turn, restless, not conscientious.”
Fast-forward to adulthood, and the kids scoring lowest on those measures scored highest for things like breathing problems, gum disease, sexually transmitted disease, inflammation, overweight, and high cholesterol and blood pressure, according to an international research team led by Duke University psychologists Terrie Moffitt and Avshalom Caspi. Findings are reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences.
The impulsivity and relative inability to think about the long-term exhibited by lower self-control individuals resulted in more difficulty with finances, like savings, home ownership, and credit card debt. They also were more likely to be single parents, have a criminal conviction record, and be dependent on alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, and harder drugs.
“These adult outcomes were predictable across the entire spectrum of self-control scores, from low to high,” Moffitt says.
Yet study participants who somehow found a way to improve their self-control as they aged fared better in adulthood than their childhood scores would have predicted. Self-control is something that can be taught, the researchers say, and doing so could save taxpayers a pile of money on health care, criminal justice, and substance abuse problems down the road.
To further corroborate the importance of self-control, Caspi and Moffitt ran the same analysis on a sample of 500 pairs of fraternal twins in Britain and found that the sibling with lower self-control scores at age 5 was more likely than their sibling to begin smoking, perform poorly in school, and engage in antisocial behaviors at age 12.
“This shows that self-control is important by itself, apart from all other factors that siblings share, such as their parents and home life,” Caspi says.
The New Zealand children with low-self control were more likely to make poor choices as adolescents, including taking up smoking, having unplanned pregnancies, and dropping out of school. Naturally, this set them on a more difficult path. Even the low self-control individuals who finished high school as non-smokers without kids showed poorer outcomes at age 32.
And because of a greater likelihood of single-parent status and limited income, it’s also apparent that “one generation’s low self-control puts the next generation at a disadvantage as well,” Moffitt says.
“The good news is that self-control can change. People can change,” says Alexis Piquero, a professor of criminology at Florida State University who was not involved in the research.
Piquero, who studies the developmental roots of criminal behavior, says there are many time-tested approaches that give parents and teachers the tools to teach self-control. The successful programs practice decision-making, role-playing and learning the consequences of actions.
“Identifying low self-control as early as possible and doing prevention and intervention is so much cheaper” than dealing with prisons, drug programs, and personal economic failures, Piquero adds. “If you’re just making a dollars-and-cents decision, it’s a no-brainer.”
The study was supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the UK Medical Research Council, New Zealand Health Research Council, Hebrew University, and the Jacobs Foundation. Co-authors on the work include researchers from King’s College London and the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand.
More news from Duke: www.dukenews.duke.edu
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4 Comments
emc2
Yes, teaching self-control to those without it has got to be one of the most difficult tasks there is. I guess that’s why parents used to send their kids to the military academy, and that didn’t always work either.
Maureen martin
In my opnion, loss of self-control is often a result of poor role models, poor nutrition, invitro exposure to drugs and environmrntal toxins, and a lack of concentrated parenting. However, that said, the break down of the family has caused the traditional roles of father and mother to all but disappear, while at the same time the emergence of the ‘media hero’ as the dominent role model for the young presents additional challenges to altering misanthropic behavior. The ‘media hero’ now comes in both sexes and is often rewarded for acting out with money, fame and attention. The last being the most motivating in its immediate gratification, especially for the young. The major media is constantly educating the young that this is the way to be. Imagine if the youth oriented media was used like Aesop’s Tales were in instructing healthy behavior.
Jill
“Identifying low self-control as early as possible and doing prevention and intervention is so much cheaper” than dealing with prisons, drug programs, and personal economic failures, Piquero adds. “If you’re just making a dollars-and-cents decision, it’s a no-brainer.”
This has been said over and over again by educators, prison officials and sociologists. Why are our early childhood educators and elementary school teachers not being educated and paid at the highest levels instead of university professors? The youngest ages is when many determining factors are imprinted. Spend the money now on parental leaves and education or spend the money later on prisons.
The results of poor self-control are to be expected. The ability to alter this problem is hearening. There must be more research into the best way to implement the teaching of self-control. Such questions as, is one approach good for everyone or do there need to be specific approaches for specific problems and what testing is needed to find the best analysis of the childs’ problem?