Snow dice

What the hell is going on with kids up in Canada?

Children rated as impulsive by their kindergarten teachers appear more likely to begin gambling behaviors like playing cards or placing bets before they hit middle school, Canadian researchers said on Monday.

The study in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine is the first to show gambling among children this young, said Linda Pagani, who led the study at Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center and the Universite de Montreal.

"The question has always been, 'What comes before adolescent gambling?'" Pagani said in a telephone interview.

The study's results add gambling to a list of later problems associated with early impulsivity, she said, including delinquency, failure to complete high school and mental health and addiction problems in adulthood.

Kindergarten teachers for 163 students were asked to complete a questionnaire at the beginning of the school year to rank the children's inattentiveness, distractibility and hyperactivity.

Six years later, at an average age of 11.5, the children told the researchers in telephone interviews how often they participated in gambling-related behaviors such as playing cards or bingo, buying lottery tickets, playing video games or video poker for money or placing bets at sporting events or with friends.

Um, I don't know much of anything about Canadian gambling laws, so forgive me if I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but isn't it, you know, illegal for eleven-year-old kids to do things like buy lottery tickets and play video poker up in the Great White North?