Why Disobedient Kids Are More Likely to Become Millionaires

My 10-year-old daughter is a handful. Love her dearly, it goes without saying. Problem is, Taylor thinks she's in charge. Hardly a day goes by in which we're not arguing over: her attitude, her tone, her backtalk, the completely inappropriate thing she did in public, the fight she started with her older sister . . . The list goes on.

But I've also noticed two things about her:

1) She's incredibly competitive. Taylor isn’t the most athletic kid on her soccer team, but if she gets smoked a couple of times in a 1v1 drill, the claws come out. She won't get smoked again. Likewise, no matter the size or significance of the argument, she’s relentless. She won't back down. No threat eases the tension; no punishment (and we've tried them all) prevents it from happening again. She. Must. Win. Even if it leaves half the household in tears.



2) She's a completely different kid at school. When we get Taylor's report card, we're sometimes tempted to call the school to make sure we received the right one. The praise is effusive: “patient and happy,” “the most helpful kid in class,” “goes above and beyond,” “agreeable.” Agreeable!?!

After a big blowup, I typically try to find a silver lining, mostly to convince my wife that we’re not the worst parents on the East Coast. There’s just something about Taylor’s edge that’s familiar to me. I see it in the most successful businesspeople I know. The same attributes that make her a challenge to parent seem to help adults thrive in the corporate world.

When I say this out loud, my wife typically rolls her eyes and continues self-flagellating. But earlier this week, a study in the journal Developmental Psychology backed me up. Researchers in the U.S., Luxembourg, and Berlin tracked 745 kids from ages 12 to 52, and uncovered the environmental factors and personality traits in children that lead to big jobs and high salaries as adults. A few that are key:

Intelligence
Parents’ socioeconomic status
Years of education
Being a responsible student (taking school seriously, studying)
Educational attainment (i.e., challenging themselves with harder classes)
Rule breaking and defiance of parental authority
Obviously, a couple of these are luck of the draw. But one is clearly not like the others, standing out to researchers like a big bully on the playground. Rule breaking and defiance of parental authority, they were surprised to find, were the best noncognitive predictors of higher income later in life.

Why? The researchers speculate that perhaps these people value competition more than interpersonal relations, or maybe they’re just more willing to stand up for their own interests and aims. My gut: It’s probably a combination of both.

The researchers also uncovered the traits that hold kids back. The big two: a sense of inferiority (compared to classmates) and a pessimistic attitude overall. Students with too much of either generally do poorly in school, which holds them back later in life. Though, interestingly enough, defiant pessimists actually have better than average success.

All of which has me thinking about Taylor’s future again. Recently, when my in-laws were in town, I suggested to my mother-in-law that we all go out to dinner at Applebee's. Without looking up from her Minecraft game, Taylor chimed in: “Grandma, I’m sorry your daughter married such an uninteresting man. I’m going to marry someone awesome, because I’m so awesome."

Defiant, optimistic, confident. Not to mention an eviscerating sense of humor. I’m more convinced than ever: This kid is going to run a company, or singlehandedly oust a foreign government. I just hope we’re still on speaking terms.
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Bill Phillips is Editor-in-Chief of Men’s Health and author of The Better Man Project.
Article source: http://www.menshealth.com/best-life/disobedient-kids-millionaires