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Study: Stubborn Kids Are More Likely to Be Successful

Jessica Stillman
3 min readOct 12, 2021

Parenting stubborn kids can be, um…. challenging. When you’re trying to explain to your toddler for the umpteenth time why socks are necessary in winter or convince your preschooler that green foods truly aren’t poisonous, you might want to throw up your hands in despair. Recent research might help, offering you a fresh injection of perspective for those days when you’re on the edge of losing your cool.

Stubbornness, it seems, isn’t just good for driving parents to distraction (or a couple of glasses of wine). It’s also a good predictor of a child’s future success in life (at least as far as success can be measured by wealth).

Your kid’s stubbornness just might help her get rich.

That’s the conclusion of a new study that followed 700 kids for decades, starting when they were 9 and checking in with them as adults of 40. Each participant’s personality was investigated at the beginning of the study, with the research team looking at traits like studiousness and conscientiousness, as well as a propensity for defiance. Then the scientists tried to uncover which traits were most correlated with professional success later on.

“Guess who earned the highest salaries in the end? The kids who ignored both rules and their parents. So, if your kid always…

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Jessica Stillman
Jessica Stillman

Written by Jessica Stillman

Top Inc.com columnist/ Editor/ Ghostwriter. Book lover. Travel fiend. Nap enthusiast. https://jessicastillman.com/

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