The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, which looked at how children from high-risk backgrounds can avoid becoming antisocial, found young children who had school friends, supportive teachers and took part in school activities and clubs, were up to 79 per cent more likely to grow up “pro-social”.
Good parenting skills were also found to protect under-nines from becoming antisocial, but school experience was the most influential.
The research paper can be found here. They found:
Involvement in a number of types of behaviour up to age 8½ significantly increased the likelihood of involvement in further anti-social and other types of problem behaviour at age 10½. These behaviours were: smoking a cigarette; setting fire to property; carrying a weapon in case of a fight; and drinking alcohol without parental permission. This suggests a strong association rather than a causal relationship.
They found that resilience was an important protective factor and say:
- Gender was found to be significantly associated with resilience – girls were more likely to be resilient than boys.
- Analysis conducted on the boys-only sample showed that the characteristics associated with resilience amongst the boys were: school enjoyment; demonstrating high levels of pro-social behaviour and having mothers with high levels of parenting skills.
Filed under: risk and protective factors , Anti-social and other problem behaviours among young ch
[...] that I see anyone about to make the attempt. I bring this up because the recent Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children took a look at what helped keep kids from high-risk backgrounds from engaging in dangerous or [...]