Delayed gratification an indication of Future Success

Our job as Parents is not to do what is easy!

Following on from my review of the great book The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About Genes, Talent and Intelligence is Wrong: The New Science of Genes, Talent and Human Potential by David Shenk, I have some information about a great piece of learning for me.

I have always known that as parents our job is not to do what is easy, but to do what is right and I have suspected that we need to step back more and allow our children to fail; this was all affirmed in the book. I also suspected that giving in too easily could have massive consequences later on in life, but I was not sure why until I read this book and then it all made sense.

The book talks about an experiment involving children and marshmallows. The children were left in the room and told that they could have one marshmallow now or wait a while and have two. I don’t want go into the ins and outs of the experiment but the interesting bit came when they went back to the children later on in life and found that the ones who waited and had two marshmallows had far exceeded academically those who ate the marshmallow straight away.

What this study showed was that children who could delay gratification early in life were more likely to be able to put in the persistence required to succeed in life.

It affirmed for me that frequent rewards will not give children this persistence as they will give up too easily. And delayed gratification is an early indication for a tendency towards self discipline needed to do well in exams. Interestingly, the study also found that the children who delayed their marshmallow eating craving also had fewer social problems.

What they also found in the study was that children can be taught to delay gratification, for example being told to think of the marshmallows as pictures and to not see them as real decreased the number of children who ate the marshmallow straight away.

In a world where everything is instant, it is so important for us as parents to think of how we can teach our children to wait.

Here are some tips from the book on teaching delayed gratification.

1. Be a model of self-control

Show your children how to do it by not giving in to all your wants and desires.

2. Help them practice

Give them opportunities to practice and wait for things.

3. Don’t give in to everyday pleas

Just because your child wants it now does not mean you should give it. Don’t give in so easily.

4. Let them deal with frustration so they can teach themselves

Don’t rush in to make a sad child happy; let them learn for themselves how to deal with frustration.

And my gem from the book…

True failure is to give up and sell your children short.

We are not supposed to make things easy for our children, we need to present the problem, monitor their response and moderate the behaviour for next time.

Developing your children’s talent

Your Children’s Talent

I have just read the most fantastic book;The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About Genes, Talent and Intelligence is Wrong: The New Science of Genes, Talent and Human Potential by David Shenk

Basically, this book turns on its head everthing we think we know about genius and talent. It reminds me of another great book called The Outliers, but this to me is much more practical. The premise of the book is that it is not our genetics that make us smart, but our genetics multiplied by our environment. What I love most about this book is that you read it, thinking thay you could do anything if only you could put your mind to it. It is a book that makes you feel you can rather than you can’t.

The book introuduces the concept of what it call Dynamic Development, stating that we do not develop just as our genes predict we should, but we develop in relation to our environment, including how we are parented, what we eat and what is expected of us.

The book clearly states that talent is the outcome of persistence and uses many example to explain this using the fabled 10,000 hour rule. The author suggests that persitence is the difference between medioracy and enourmous success. He suggests that developing a talent is a dynamic system and a process which is affected by our state, the intensity to which we train our mindset, how we respond to failure, the strategies we adopt and more importantly, the time we put in. He explains in the book how our development has plasticity and is not set in stone, which I believe is a message we all need to hear.

So, what is his advice to parents in supporting their children’s talent development?

1. Speak to your children and speak often. Talking, as the Hart and Risley study shows, can improve academic performance.

2. Have a stimulating environment – children that grow in stimulating environments are most likely to become more intelligent.

3. Nurture and encourage. By the time a child in a professional family is five years old it has heard 560,000 encouraging words. In comparison, a child from a working class family has only heard 100,000, while a child from a welfare family has received 100,000 words of discouragement.

4, Set high expectations that stretch your child

5. Embrace failure

6, Encouarge a growth mindset.

There is also a whole piece in this book on how to help children with delayed gratifcation, but I will save that for another post.

Just get this book, it is great!

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Why less stressful at Dad’s?

What Mothers can do to find the balance.

I recently got an e-mail that got me thinking. It was regarding a 17-year-old boy who had just moved out of his Mums house to live with his Dad. He was having conflict with his Mum about not doing well at at school. This mother felt angry that he had moved and felt that the son was not showing enough discilpline. To cut a long story short, while talking to a friend the son had said that living there was a lot less stressful, very calm and quiet. He then went on to say that he had flooded his dad’s kitchen that week by accident and that he and his dad were in hysterics, laughing about it whilst cleaning it up together. He said that if it had been in his mum’s house she would have grounded him. The question the person was asking me was, how as a single parent did you get the balance and why did children find it less stressful at Dad’s house?

Read more

What is wrong with our young girls?

Why so much foundation?

OK, I had the pleasure of going into town on a Saturday with my daughter, something I hardly ever do. As we sat on the bench eating and watching the world go by, I was struck by two things.

All the youth looked the same and looked so miserable!

I asked Bronte what she noticed when looking at all the young people walking past. After telling me to stop staring, she said, “They all look the same don’t they?” They sure did; foundation plastered on, black eyes, skinny jeans and low t-shirt type tops. “Why do they all look like that?” I asked her. “So that they don’t stick out!” she answered.

As we sat and pondered more and, much to Bronte’s horror looked at them more, I began to wonder who their role models are, who are they trying to look like. I went through all the female actresses and pop stars I could think of and it wasn’t them. Then it hit me – they all looked like glamour models, even the same miserable expressions! They were all mini Katie Price!

Why on earth would they choose to copy her looks? Perhaps, to young people, it looks like she got where she is without any work, perhaps just wearing loads of foundation gets you noticed! I was at a loss.

On the way home I shared my thoughts with Bronte, who with a look of horror on her face agreed with me and promtly asked me to give her make-up lessons when she got home.

How often do our young people follow the crowd without ever thinking why?

Bullying and Twitter

I was very pleased to see bulying uk  talking about twitter although most of the youth I speak to  are not willing to give up there chat for twitter quite yet.

Is Twitter really a risk?

However what did worry me is that I think this report missed out the most important risk for youth on twitter.

I personally think sharing photos, videos and not showing your location will do little to protect youth from the real risk which is seeing inappropriate content.

The best advice you can give your child is to not follow anyone they don’t know. If you don’t follow them they can not send you a direct message . Most people’s direct messages are just full of sexual spam stuff you really do not want them seeing.

Read Sarah’s Parent’s Guide to Twitter

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