14 DAY TRIAL // It's a widely accepted fact that kids more often than not go haywire when they hit adolescence. A team of researchers says that it is possible to predict whether or not a child will grow to be a drinker by observing their behavior while they are merely toddlers.
The specialists base their claim on data collected while monitoring thousands of kids born in South West England.
These children were kept a close eye on from their infancy until the age of fifteen and a half, Live Science informs us.
During this time frame, the researchers collected information concerning their personality traits and their behavior.
The information was provided by parents and by the subjects themselves, once they were old enough to chitchat with the scientists.
“People don't enter adolescence as blank slates; they have a history of life experiences that they bring with them, dating back to early childhood.
“This is one of the most comprehensive attempts to understand very early childhood predictors of adolescent alcohol use in a large epidemiological cohort,” psychologist Danielle Dick commented on the importance of this investigation.
It appears that emotionally unstable children have higher chances of taking up drinking when they turn into adolescents. The same goes for kids who are not in the least sociable, and for those who are highly sociable.
Otherwise put, kids who are either emotionally challenged or oddly extrovert have higher chances to engage in teen drinking.
This link between certain personality traits and drinking appears to support the theory that, at least in the case of teenagers, drinking is less the result of personal wishes and desires and more a social phenomenon.
“This underscores the fact that drinking during adolescence is largely a social phenomenon. However, this doesn't mean it's less problematic; we know from other studies that most adolescent drinking is high risk – for example, binge drinking — and can lead to numerous negative consequences,” researcher Danielle Dick pointed out in a statement.