If you want to raise a successful son, make sure he has a lot of support from you and his teachers.
Researchers from the University of Montreal carried out a 30-year study with the aim of determining “which disruptive behaviours in kindergarten are associated with employment earnings in adulthood for boys from low socioeconomic backgrounds.”
The results are compelling.
Researchers followed nearly 1,000 boys over three decades and analyzed the correlation between their kindergarten teachers’ assessments of them when they were five or six years old and how much money they earned as 35 and 36-year-old adults. The findings were published in JAMA Pediatrics.
Researchers concluded that boys who paid better attention in school and behaved similarly as young children ended up earning more money later in life.
The kindergarten teachers evaluated the boys in five different areas. The four negative areas included inattention, hyperactivity, opposition, and physical aggression. The positive area was prosociality, defined as “helping, sharing and cooperating.”
The boys were evaluated yearly through age 17 and less often in the years following, study lead author Richard Tremblay told Inc.
Children who were rated more prosocial and were less inattentive, hyperactive, physically aggressive and opposing earned significantly higher salaries 30 years later—an average of $12,000 more. The data was gleaned from the men’s tax returns.
Girls weren’t included in the study because the research centred on juvenile delinquency, and boys from a low socioeconomic environment are more at risk.
According to Tremblay, quality daycare may help boys who struggle with negative issues. He also suggested that extra support for students, parents, and teachers of particularly aggressive and hyperactive children can be beneficial. A two-year program that offered such support resulted in less drug use, delinquency, and criminal convictions by age 24. It also boosted the number of high school graduates.
The study suggests how boys act as kindergartners may predict what their life will be like as adults. It also suggests giving these children support will influence how successful they are later in life21
