![]() This finding is good news for us parents! It means that we can actually do something positive to teach our kids about delaying gratification. In other words, self-control and delayed gratification are essential life skills - but they can be learned. Walter Mischel concluded that “preschoolers tended to wait longer when they were given effective strategies.” In some of their studies, more children were able to resist the siren call of the marshmallow - because the researchers taught them how. The researchers continued to conduct a lot of variations on the marshmallow test. So, is the lesson that some people are born with better self-control, and that this trait determines their entire life trajectory? Over the years, the children who had “passed” the marshmallow test developed the following characteristics: ![]() They found that the 4-year-olds who had successfully waited for 15 minutes differed in significant ways from the children who couldn’t wait. The researchers continued to follow up with the children for the next several decades. Some children gobbled the marshmallow immediately, while others managed to wait the full 15 minutes and receive the reward of a second marshmallow. One by one, 4-year-old children were presented with a marshmallow and informed that they could either eat a marshmallow now, or wait 15 minutes and receive two marshmallows. Have you heard of the famous “marshmallow test” conducted by Walter Mischel and a team of researchers at Stanford University in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s? Psychologists have studied why some kids seem to excel at demonstrating self-control and delaying gratification, while others struggle for long time now. Marshmallow Test: The Famous Study in Self-Control and Delayed Gratification ![]() Instead of expecting 2- and 3-year-olds to magically acquire self-control skills overnight (that would be cool though, wouldn’t it?), I need to model and teach these skills to them. Editor’s Note: For more about the most effective ways to teach kids delayed gratification and more, click here for our FREE mini-course How to Be a Positive Parent.
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