Your Child and Self-Control: Job or Jail?
Whether your child grows up to lead a productive, satisfying life — or instead grows up to lead a life of crime — a new study shows that self-control is a determining factor. An added benefit for those who have learned this form of personal power at an early age? Fewer health problems and fewer financial problems, according to Terrie Moffitt, professor of psychology at Duke University and King’s College London.
NPR reported:
Self-control keeps us from eating a whole bag of chips or from running up the credit card. A new study says that self-control makes the difference between getting a good job or going to jail — and we learn it in preschool.
“Children who had the greatest self-control in primary school and preschool ages were most likely to have fewer health problems when they reached their 30s,” says Terrie Moffitt, a professor of psychology at Duke University and King’s College London.
Moffitt and a team of researchers studied a group of 1,000 people born in New Zealand in 1972 and 1973, tracking them from birth to age 32. The new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the best evidence yet on the payoff for learning self-discipline early on.
For further information on this study, and for a little parenting advice as to how to help your child with his or her self-development in this area:
Read the full article published here
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