Risk taking and low expectations

Low expectations of teenagers could actually make their behaviour worse. Researchers from Wake Forest University, North Carolina and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studied more than 250 children and their mothers. The children were in Year 6 and Year 7 at the start of the study and were re-surveyed a year later. The children whose mothers expected them to be more rebellious and take more risks at the start of the study did so, as did the children who themselves had low expectations of how they would behave when they became teenagers.

You can find out more about this research at

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091021100752.htm