Researchers suggest that parents really are to blame when their kids go off the rails.

A study conducted by a team at Edinburgh University suggests that parents who are firm but who trust their children provoke fewer conflicts than those who lay down the law. And it suggests that children who are bullied are more likely to end up as delinquents.

The university's Professor David Smith said the least successful kind of parents were those carried arbitrary and inconsistent attempts to control children with threats that were not carried out. This leads the child to conclude that behaving well does not get results.

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The ongoing project, backed by the Economic and Social Research Council, is investigating 4,300 12 and 13-year-olds in Edinburgh.

More than half the children in the study admitted to two or more "delinquent acts" in the previous year, including shop lifting, fighting, carrying a weapon, stealing from cars, graffiti and assaults.

These children were also more likely to smoke, to have used illegal drugs or to have drunk alcohol.

The researchers measured three personality traits, impulsivity, alienation (in which children believed the world was against them), and self-esteem. Impulsivity and alienation were found to be strongly linked to both offending and victimisation.

Surprisingly, while delinquency among boys was twice as common, it increased more among girls between 12 and 13.