School's out for summer! Have you checked the year-end report cards? What were your expectations, and did you know your expectations probably affected your young students more than you realized?Brigham Young University and Penn State researchers assembled a group of two-parent families with at least two children. The parents were asked how their children were similar or different when it came to schoolwork.

Overall, parents tended to believe their older child was the better student, even though the previous year's report card and grade-point average often showed that wasn’t the case. As Rodney Dangerfield would say, the younger kids can’t get no respect!

But wait there’s more. Parents also showed gender bias, usually believing that a daughter was a better student than a son (which on average was true).

Researchers discovered that the biggest determining factor in how the kids would perform the following year in school was the parents’ belief in who the better student was. Because Mom and Dad thought it would be so and acted accordingly, the kid expected to outperform the other one did, by an average bump of 0.21 GPA points. (Time)

Lesson to learn: Watch yourself to set equal expectations for all your kids so you don’t give some a pass and put extra pressure on others to perform!

Orlando /Three Lions/Getty Images
Orlando /Three Lions/Getty Images
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