PBS Newshour: Can teaching kids to resist the marshmallow help pave the way to success?

Parents Forum
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When children demonstrate self-control, it’s a strong indicator of later educational and economic success. But even for kids who can’t resist immediate gratification, self-control is a skill that can be taught. Economics correspondent Paul Solman visits a school in New York where many low-income kids are learning strategies for discipline.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/can-teaching-kids-resist-marshmallow-pave-road-success/

Also:
This South Bronx kid would have failed the marshmallow test. So how did he get into Yale?
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/south-bronx-kid-failed-marshmallow-test-get-yale/

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We’re very familiar with the marshmallow test and my son is extremely proud that my 4 year old grandson passes with flying colors…
but I think there is a very serious correlation vs. causation issue with this research.

Kids who grow up in stable, predictable environments also learn, early on, that deferred gratification is a safe and useful strategy. If you grow up in a world where there are plenty of marshmallows, and the adults consistently do what they say they are going to do … then putting aide a marshmallow in the hopes of getting a 2nd one is an easy choice to make.

My kids always used to hoard their halloween candy for months – they would come home, sort through and throw away or trade with each all the candies they didn’t like, and stash their favorites in a bedroom drawer for future use. Why? I never suggested that they do that, but they knew that they would always have pocket money for candy whenever they wanted, and that I wouldn’t take away or even touch their stash. (OK, I admit it, I used to steal my daughter’s smartie’s - I love those things - but at least most of her stash was preserved).

But what if a kid grows up in an environment where resources are short? Where sometimes there is nothing at all to eat at home? Where they can’t simply ask their mom to buy a bag of marshmallows at the grocery store whenever they want?

Not only do those kids not learn to defer gratification-- but for them, that’s a stupid choice. They have grown up in a world where if they don’t grab the marshmallow, someone else will take it an eat it, sooner rather than later. And a grownup’s promise of a 2nd marshmallow when the grownup returns could very well be a ruse— heck, even the claim that the grownup will be back at all is not going to be trusted by a kid who can’t even count on parents showing up at predictable times.

So rather than looking at how the kid performs on the test – I think you have to look at the overall environment that kid is growing up in, and the larger impact that will have on all choices and options available throughout life. Basically the marshmallow test is a culturally biased, rich kid’s test. “Rich” in relative terms – my grandson has been brought up on “starving student” economics, but it’s a stable environment. So yeah, grandson passes the test --he does even better, because he learned pretty early that not only was food plentiful in his would, but adults could be easily manipulated into giving him all sorts of sweets, simply by virtue of his cuteness.

I think you can teach the marshmallow skills, but that isn’t going to solve the problems faced by kids who grow up in poverty, instability, or who experience neglect or abuse from adults around them.

3

Because KIPP helped him to develop delay of gratification skills. And it didn’t hurt he was a URM.

4

I would have passed this test.
I hate marshmallows and always have.

With that said, I have horrible delayed gratification issues. My upbringing wasn’t exactly stable (through no fault of my parents) and most food and whatnot was eat/use it or lose it. But, it seems to work out and I am (slowly) learning patience in my early-mid 20s (oh gosh it just occurred to me that in a week, I’ll be in my mid-20s. Yikes!).

Many of the comments to the article were spot-on.

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Adding to Calmom’s point, researchers have re-done the marshmallow test, with unreliable adults.

http://rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=4622

And they discovered that kids are smart. They won’t wait for a second marshmallow if they don’t trust the adults to deliver it. A kid growing up in an environment where delaying gratification means losing gratification will, intelligently, grab that marshmallow right now.

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Acemoglu and Robinson’s Why Nations Fail makes similar arguments on national scales. Basically, if the political and economic environment is untrustworthy (including if a government unpredictably and suddenly expropriates property, or the country is prone to civil war that can destroy any kind of long term investment), people have less or no incentive to think beyond the short term, resulting in less overall economic growth. However, this may be intended by the entrenched elites who prefer to protect their own economic and political positions, rather than have economic growth that could allow others to challenge their economic and/or political power.

http://whynationsfail.com/

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Yes, I also was going to echo the fact that research has suggested that the delayed gratification in the marshmallow experiment depended on whether the kids trusted the adults. And the kids who lived in a world with reliable adults would eventually be more likely to graduate from high school, etc. Very interesting.

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I remember that test having to do with greed. Everyone knows that one marshmallow is all you need, so two would basically represent greed.

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I haven’t read the article, but the post that mentions that one marshmallow is all you need, so two would represent greed reminded me of this…

when I would substitute teach, and a child would bring in Bday cupcakes, it always annoyed me that there would be a couple kids who would try to get two…even though it was obvious that there were only enough for one each…and maybe an extra one for miscount or something.

Is that the gist of the marshmallow test?

edit…Ok…I see now what the test is. I totally would have passed since i hate marshmallows…but I think I still could have passed if it was a Hershey’s Kiss.

We grew up learning to WAIT …Santa would come and we would have to WAIT til our parents got up before we could open presents. We had to wait and open them one at a time so parents could see.

We had to save our allowance to buy something bigger.

We had to wait for all kinds of things.

10

Well I got two kids and although I never tried the marshmallow test I’m pretty sure one would have passed and the other would not. Don’t think I ever treated them differently. Both are successful. One would wait for the two marshmallows and the other would eat one now and then figure out how to get the second one too

11

In the original study, only a tiny fraction grabbed up the treat right away (and it was only sometimes a marshmellow.) About a 3rd waited the whole 15 minutes. However, MOST waited for some time and I think that fact gets over-looked. Of course kids can learn self-control and most do whether it’s intentionally taught or not (otherwise lines at Disneyland would be murderous.) Are most people perfect at it? Of course not. Most of us are lucky to have self-control in the areas that really matter… if it were easy, no one would be an ounce over-weight and we’d not be facing a chocolate shortage.

The real issue, to me, is that small fraction who didn’t wait at all. They are the most at risk whether its because of their environment or whether it’s an inborn impulsiveness.

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I do think that in the “old days” there were rules and routines in schools that helped foster “self control” . Were kids perfect? No. But, even the “less-perfect” (ha!) probably learned more self-control than in the more free-for-alll atmosphere that is more common today.

When I went to school, classrooms didn’t allow all the “social voice talking” and “getting up” that I’ve seen in K-6 schools. We learned to “line up” and “freeze” at the bell and other discipline methods. No, there was no “corporal punishments” at any school that I attended.

I am grateful that both of my kids had K-3 teachers who “were in the classroom when Kennedy was shot”…so they were veterans of the more “old style” discipline in the classroom

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Based on my personal experience (kids, grandkids), the only thing that really help to raise very successful kids is to spoil them rotten, spoil them as much as you can afford. Seems that this kids not only very ambitious, hard working, very caring for others, have great number of interests, they also tend to do everything on the priority basis, which requires a great self-control. Why? They were given everything that they have aksed, which include participation in tons of un-related activities. They are used to manage their time since they were 5 y o, and that requires a great self-control.

14

I would love to meet a five year old who knows how to manage his or her time.

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“A kid growing up in an environment where delaying gratification means losing gratification will, intelligently, grab that marshmallow right now.”

Right, but there are no environments where all the kids make the same choice. The upper-middle-class kids with stable, trustworthy families differed from one another. I think that, like the SAT, this test is useful for distinguishing between kids in similar demographic bands, but not as useful across bands.

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Can anybody please explain post #12 to me? I have read it multiple times and I still don’t get it. :-t

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I was wondering what CC thread would finally pull me out of lurkdom to post. I’ve known about, and been fascinated by this study for years since I saw a pbs show about it in the early 80’s when I was a kid. I’ve always wondered how my two kids (now high schoolers) would fare if I marshmallow tested them, and I’d always been too worried that the results would not be what I’d hoped for to actually do it. Now I realize how silly I’ve been! The things parents worry about! I’m glad I never tested them with marshmallows, and possibly drawn incorrect conclusions about their future ability to be successful.

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Well, my son did test my grandson – but I would have known he would “pass” without the test! And I am absolutely sure that my own kids would too – it’s just a matter of observation. The long term hoarding of halloween candy that I referenced in my post #1 is an example – or how the kids handle their allowances (losing the money? spending it right away? saving up for something special they want to buy? banking it?). There was a kid down the street who used whatever cash he had to run his own business-- he was always running his own yard sales or going door to door selling stuff … the family moved away, but I’ll bet the kid is now a successful businessman, whether or not he went to college.

I do feel that child rearing practices play a part. Once, when my grandson was 2 or 3 years old, we were having a Skype chat and my grandson’s bedroom floor was completely littered with toys. My son asked him, “do you want to bake cookies?” My grandson said “yes!” My son said, “well, if you pick up all of your toys, then we can go downstairs and make cookies.” - I never saw a kid pick up so many toy so fast. That he “passes” the marshmallow test at age 4 may be largely a result of growing up in an environment where he has consistently been exposed to a system of conditional rewards: if you do X – then you will get Y. Of course many parents also incorporate or use timers at home (for example, setting a timer to regulate the amount of computer time) - which also will condition a young child to be aware of the linear passage of time, rather than continually function in the moment.

I agree that inborn personality also plays a part – but I do think that those of us who are fortunate enough to raise our kids in middle class homes also have many more opportunities to instill our kids with underlying skills and conceptual understanding that go into a pattern of deferred gratification. And it may be that underlying knowledge that is far more important than the specific test.

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We did our own “marshmallow” test by giving our kids money every time went on trips. S nearly always saved his $$$$, while D would spend at least some of it on things to remember the trip by. Neither has regrets about purchases made and forgone. S does have a lot more money at 27 than D at 25 (he has also been working full time for 3.5 years at a good job and has a hobby that makes him more than his job–heck he has tons more money than I did at his age). Both kids are pretty good at deferring gratification and I consider them both successful.

20

“I would love to meet a five year old who knows how to manage his or her time”
-Any of them who are in activities (there are many in our area), have to manage their time, period. Just tell the kid that she is not going to her practice until she is done with her 5 min. homework. If she was dreaming about being there with her friends, I can gaurantee that the next day, you will not need to ask if everything for school is done, it will be!!! I call it managing time, you may call it differently. This has worked for my kid all the way thru (almost there!) graduating from Med. School.

Kids who are left to watch TV for the most of the day may not posses this skill, I agree with that 100%.