perhaps mothers are more aware of their child’s delinquent behavior than are teachers, to the degree that such behavior might be more frequent outside of school. That self-reports contribute little to our findings is interesting: perhaps adults are more inclined to rate a child’s behavior in the context of what is developmentally appropriate and how it compares to that of his/her peers, whereas a child’s notion of his/her own behavior lacks contextual and developmental perspective. Child reports of externalizing behavior may reflect more adolescent “bravado”; in this developmental period, it may be more common for youths to engage in a multitude of low-level externalizing behaviors, potentially obscuring GxE interaction effects, which would still be evident in teacher and parent reports of delinquency that reflect more understanding of what varies from normative adolescent externalizing.
