Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Books FOR strong-willed children?

I wonder if the new paper below, which I have not read, is relevant to the subject of strong-willed children.

The Economic Value of Breaking Bad Misbehavior, Schooling and the Labor Market
Nicholas W. Papageorge
Johns Hopkins University Department of Economics

Victor Ronda
Johns Hopkins University Department of Economics

Yu Zheng
City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) - Department of Economics & Finance

September 30, 2014

Abstract:
Prevailing research argues that childhood misbehavior in the classroom is bad for schooling and, presumably, bad overall. In contrast, we argue that childhood misbehavior reflects underlying traits that are potentially valuable in the labor market. We follow work from psychology and treat measured classroom misbehavior as reflecting two underlying non-cognitive traits. Next, we estimate a model of life-cycle decisions, allowing the impact of each of the two traits to vary by economic outcome. We show the first evidence that one of the traits capturing childhood misbehavior, discussed in psychological literature as the externalizing trait (and linked, for example, to aggression), does indeed reduce educational attainment, but also increases earnings. This finding highlights a broader point: non-cognition is not well summarized as a single underlying trait that is either good or bad per se. Using the estimated model, we assess competing pedagogical policies. For males, we find that policies aimed at eliminating the externalizing trait increase schooling attainment, but also reduce earnings. In comparison, policies that decrease the schooling penalty of the externalizing trait increase both schooling and earnings.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 64
Keywords: Labor, Education, Non-Cognitive Skills
JEL Classification: J10, J20, I20

Bostonian, thank you for the link. I'll download the paper later and take a look. Knock wood, the problems seem less in the classroom than at home at the moment, but I suspect the theory holds for the workforce either way.

Thank you all for your thoughts and suggestions (and empathy). We've had a crazy few weeks so sorry for the delay.

DS reads at roughly high school level. He did like the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books. I'll look at the others.

Bought a copy of the Setting Limits with Your Strong-Willed Child book aeh had recommended a few months ago. I had a library copy then but think we need to own it. Fortunately, DS isn't all the way to the right on all the scales, but I'm pretty sure we have temperment mismatches with each other (and DS/DH even worse). Now if only I could figure out a "natural consequence" for throwing himself on the stairs and refusing to go to his room for a timeout...