Parenting skill is the key to all behavioural issues

[hobbgoblin]

Discuss!

Whether you call it old fashioned discipline, modern behaviour management...whatever you call it...good boundaries, clarity and consistency will almost without fail 'cure' even the most badly behaved child.

Nah - your genes are 'locked' I reckon Edam.

Anyway, don't be tryin' to engage me in a high falutin' debate Mrs, I'm too thick to express myself to that degree (shit genes .

No, I'm sure you have lovely genes, it's just the environment that has inhibited them!

And the way they are exhibited changes over time as well, to do with the culmulative effect of environmental exposure - that's why identical twins can end up being quite different in physical appearance/experience of illness by the time they are middle-aged despite having the same genes and sharing some astonishingly similar physical traits such as wrinkles in exactly the same places.

Environment definitley affects gene expression - that is a major newish area of research. It doesn't alter the DNA - it alters chemical modifications of to/around DNA that alters expression of the genes.

But the possibilities are not unlimited. My favorourite quote on this is from Daniel Debbet: The genes hold the phenotye on a leash. That is, you can vary so much depending on your environment, but some outcomes are more likely than others, and some are affectively impossible. I think, for example, that my being a successful athlete is outside my library of possibilities......

Daniel Dennett even

phenotype, even, (typing in charge of sick 4 yr-old lame excuse emoticon)

S'crap typing genes....environment has buggered them Acin!

Thank you edam, my genes are very lovely

Still think levelling everything at the parents is too weighted. many people involved in a child's upbringing and sphere of influence.

Takes a village and all that.....

Peers are very influential in children's lives (and adults, come to that)- so herding groups of 30 age-same peers through the institution of school may not be the brightest idea society ever came up with.

Yup, I definitley have crappy typing and spelling genes. You should be lucky you're not trying to read my handwriting.....

Guess your genes would rule you out of being PM in today's environment, then, Acinonyx.