Tantrum throwing toddlers future criminals?

LONDON - Research has thrown up some disquieting findings: tantrums in toddlers show they may grow up to be drugs addicts or criminals.

Badly behaved children as young as three may grow up to face financial and health problems in adulthood. Researchers believe that identifying youngsters at an early stage could be a low cost way of tackling such prickly issues like drug abuse and prisoners.

Prof. Terrie Moffitt and Prof. Avshalom Caspi, of Duke University in North Carolina, US, said the impulsivity and relative inability to think about the long-term gave them more difficulty with issues like savings, home ownership and credit card debt.

The long term study followed more than 1,000 children in New Zealand through their lives to established links between early behaviour and success in adulthood, according to a Duke University statement.

The youngsters were assessed by teachers, parents, observers and the participants themselves on a range of measures, the Telegraph reports.

Some of them included “low frustration tolerance, lacks persistence in reaching goals, difficulty sticking with a task, overactive, acts before thinking, has difficulty waiting turn, restless, not conscientious.”

They also were more likely to be single parents, have a criminal conviction record, and be dependent on alcohol, tobacco, cannabis and harder drugs.

Even the low self-control individuals who finished high school as non-smokers showed poorer outcomes at 32.

The badly behaved youth suffered most from breathing problems, gum disease, sexually transmitted disease, inflammation, overweight and high cholesterol and blood pressure.

Prof Moffitt said: “These adult outcomes were predictable across the entire spectrum of self-control scores, from low to high.”