by the Editor     How much influence do parents have over their children’s and teen's behaviour?  Is it just as important to model the behaviour we want our children to emulate, or is it enough to tell them?  Research over the years has shown that, as parents, our actions have a bigger impact than we may think.

Studies have shown that parental influence is important in areas including behaviour, bullying, empathy, alcohol, smoking, and diet.

New research from the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research and The University of Western Australia shows that parents have an important role to play in teaching their children to understand another person’s feelings and point of view.

Lead researcher Brad Farrant said: “We found that mothers who have higher levels of empathy were more likely to encourage their children to think how others might be feeling, which in turn was associated with greater development of empathy skills in the child.”

Quite simply, mothers who more regularly take the perspective of others are more likely to encourage their children to do the same. Dr Farrant said children with more advanced perspective-taking skills behave more positively with other people.

“Parents can promote the development of their child’s perspective-taking skills by encouraging their child to take the perspective of other children.  This could be as simple as asking the child to think about why another child might be angry with them,” Dr Farrant said.

According to Dr Farrant these latest findings reinforce the importance of parents in modelling good social behaviour in early childhood. It supports previous research that found that warm and responsive parenting in infancy also promotes the development of pro-social behaviour.

At the University of Cincinnati, researcher Elizabeth Sweeney said her review of the literature found that children raised by authoritarian parents – parents who are demanding, directive and unresponsive – are the most prone to act out bullying behaviour.

On the other hand, there were parallels showing that children raised by nurturing, warm, responsive parents were less likely to bully.

“Children who experience hostility, abuse, physical discipline and other aggressive behaviours by their parents are more likely to model that behaviour in their peer relationships,” she writes. “Children learn from their parents how to behave and interact with others,” Sweeney says. “So if they’re learning about aggression and angry words at home, they will tend to use these behaviours as coping mechanisms when they interact with their peers.”

A study at Ohio State University set out to see how the influence of three important social environments in teens' lives -- family, peers and school -- changed during the course of adolescence.

The results showed, as expected, that the effect of friends and school grew during early adolescence, peaked in mid-adolescence, and then began to slowly decline. On the other hand, the influence of parents did not show any pattern of change, but remained steady through the teen years.

"People tend to perceive parents as likely losers in the competition with their children's friends over influencing adolescent behavior," said Sung Joon Jang, author of the study and assistant professor of sociology at Ohio State. "This study was designed to see how the changes and transitions of adolescence affected parental, peer and school influence."

Jang measured the influence of family over time by examining how close the teens perceived themselves to be to their parents and how often they participated in family activities during each of the five years of the study.
School influence was measured by how much time teens said they spent on homework and studying, their attachment to teachers and school, and academic performance.

Jang said it makes sense that friends exert their greatest impact at about age 13 and 14. "That's really the entrance to the teen years, when many adolescents are trying to detach themselves from their parents and become more independent," he said. "That's when peers suddenly have a very significant role for adolescents."

The study found that school influence also increased during early adolescence, reaching a peak at about age 15 1/2 and then declining. Those teens with a greater commitment to education and attachment to teachers and school were less likely to commit delinquent acts.

During all of adolescence, the study found parental influence was steady.

Jang said this study shows middle adolescence to be a critical time during adolescent development, one that parents should be prepared for. "Based on these findings, I would say parents shouldn't give up providing influence and support to their adolescents," Jang said. "Parental attempts to provide support may not always be welcomed by teens. But even when they appear to reject their parents' support, teens seem to still be listening to what their parents say.

Another area where parents have a particularly strong impact on their children’s behaviour is with regard to alcohol. Levels of parental supervision influence behaviour: for example, the odds of a teenager having ever had an alcoholic drink are greater if their parents do not know where they are on a Saturday evening or if they allow their child to watch 18-rated films unsupervised.

Parents' own drinking habits also have an impact. The odds of a teenager getting drunk multiple times is twice as great if they have seen their parents drunk, even if only a few times, as those teenagers who have never seen their parents drunk. Ease of access to alcohol was also an important influencing factor on current drinking and drunkenness.

Claire Turner, Programme Manager for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said: "This research shows that parents can have more influence on their teenagers’ behaviour than perhaps many assumed. Both what parents say, and how they behave, have a strong impact on their teenagers drinking, drinking regularly, and drinking to excess."

With regard to smoking, Jean King, from Cancer Research UK, said: “Smoking is a serious problem among young people… so we welcome any new research that looks at why teenagers may start to smoke.”
“Children whose parents smoke are much more likely to become adult smokers, greatly increasing their risk of cancer in later life – so we hope this research will encourage both parents and step-parents to try and quit smoking altogether.”

Other studies show that parents have a great influence on their children’s eating habits. One study from Texas A&M University showed children commercials on healthy and unhealthy foods.

"Children were clearly influenced by the commercials they saw; however, parents are not powerless," lead research, Dr. Christopher Ferguson stated. He went on to note that although advertising effects can be considerable, "Parents have an advantage if they are consistent with their long-term messages about healthy eating."

In all, the experts agree that it is important to continue to provide our children with the messages we want them to learn, even when we think they may not be listening and that our influence on them is waning. Persistence is the key, and the attitudes and values we want to impart will most likely take hold.  On the flip side, we would also expect our children to pick up our undesirable habits or traits, so it is important to model the behaviour we wish to see in our children.

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