Parents today will frequently excuse their children's bad behavior

This is a copycat version of the OG's example given below.
Defense attorneys have occasionally argued that their clients’ misconduct stemmed from a reaction to something ingested, but in attributing criminal or delinquent behavior to some food allergy, the perpetrators are in effect told that they are not responsible for their actions.

(A) in attributing criminal or delinquent behavior to some food allergy

(B) if criminal or delinquent behavior is attributed to an allergy to some food

(C) in attributing behavior that is criminal or delinquent to an allergy to some food

(D) if some food allergy is attributed as the cause of criminal or delinquent behavior

(E) in attributing a food allergy as the cause of criminal or delinquent behavior
Answer B

In the given example of parents and children, if you say 'in attributing …', then the prepositional modifier should be immediately followed by the attributors namely 'the parents' and not 'the children' as the choice reveals. That is why B is faulty.

Hi prateek176!

Happy to help

Here's the sentence with B:

Parents today will frequently excuse their children's bad behavior in school by stating that the lessons are simply not interesting enough to hold the children's attention, but in attributing bad behavior to boring lessons, the children are effectively told that they can misbehave in school whenever they find the lessons boring.

The problem here is that with this structure, "in attributing..." is referring to "the children", not "parents". So it saying that the children are attributing bad behavior to boring lessons, which doesn't make any sense.

Hope that helps!
-Carolyn

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