As if the debate over "nature vs. nurture" wasn’t complicated enough, new research has found that behavior traits in children as young as five might be a reliable predictor for compulsive gambling later in life. The findings, published in the recent issue of the journal, Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, looked at kindergardeners who were designated as impulsive, distracted, and/or hyperactive by their teachers, and then followed up with them when they were in the sixth grade.

What they found was that, after correcting for demographic influences like household income and education, impulsive behavior seen at the age of 5 correlated with childhood involvement in gambling by the time they were in the sixth grade, with the average age being 11.5.

Adolescent gambling, which includes playing cards, bingo, lottery tickets, playing video games for money, and betting on sporting events with friends, is often a predictor of gambling problems later in life. Compulsive gambling is a disorder that can carry a high cost to families and society as a whole, and joins addiction, delinquency, and mental illness on the list of issues that are often associated with impulsivity in early childhood.

Experts are quick to point out, however, that even though the findings are compelling, impulsive behavior is in no way a guarantee of a gambling disorder. When you really think about it, most children are somewhat impulsive, anyway, and it is through the maturing process that they learn to control it.

Furthermore, there are ways to address the situation if it is in fact identified in your child. According to Dr. Sanjay Gupta on CNN, one of the most important things for a parent is to set the proper example by being calm, focused and attentive in the things we do when the children are present. Also, he says to teach kids to control their impulses by embracing the parental mantra to “stop, look, and listen,” even making a fun game of it for them.

Even still, the findings do bring up the question, is impulsive behavior inherited or learned? As a parent who spends a great deal of time with his kids, I’m struck by how much seems hard-wired in them from the get-go. Our son has always loved to express himself by hitting, and our daughter has always had a compassionate, nurturing (dare I say maternal) quality about her, though it pleases us to no end that she is not into princesses. These aren’t things we taught them (well, maybe the compassionate stuff), and they appeared from an early age.

On the other hand, there is no denying that we live in a time that is filled with impulsiveness, where shopping and spending money has become a national obsession, and rather than wait or do without, we simply spend and purchase, sometimes beyond our means. Then we go out and repeat the process, over and over again.

Along with the frantic pace of our lives and constant need to fill our every waking moment with some sort of distraction (whether it be TV, cell phones, email, blackberries, etc.), what sort of example are we setting for our children?

Of course, I can’t end this without commenting on my favorite target: TV. Besides the constant message that it conveys promoting consumerism, the very nature of the streaming images and how they quickly they flash before our kid’s eyes must, in my opinion (which I realize doesn’t amount to much), have some sort of affect on a child’s attention span.

Then again, I could very well be the only parent out there who thinks this way… but I wouldn’t bet on it.

No pun intended.