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Adults live in a world of delayed gratification. Our paychecks
come days or even weeks after we've done the work. We put in many
hours practicing musical instruments or driving golf balls to improve
our performance. We wait until the end of a meal to savor dessert,
or shun it so that we can lose five pounds by the end of the month.
Investments of time and effort come much harder to young children,
many of whom appear to live by the motto, "I want it, and I
want it now!" Given the choice between eating one jellybean
immediately and getting two jellybeans ten minutes later, many young
children find they just can't wait.
The ability to wait for rewards becomes increasingly important as
children grow older. School is filled with delays of gratification.
To be successful and graduate, many children must learn to forgo
time on the baseball field in favor of studying multiplication tables.
To get along with friends, they must learn to wait their turn at
games and to share their toys.
Psychologists have found that some children—especially boys—who
have a lot of trouble waiting are likely to have difficulties in
other areas later on. Boys who are impatient tend to be disruptive
at home, disliked by their peers, and poor at solving interpersonal
problems. It's unclear why girls who are impatient tend not to have
the same pattern of problems.
There have been some very interesting laboratory experiments, many
conducted by Dr. Walter Mischel at Columbia University, to measure
the delay of gratification among young children. A typical experiment
involves bringing a child into a room that contains, among other
things, a bell. After the child and the experimenter spend some
time together, the child is shown a pair of treats or small toys,
one of which the child perceives as much better than the other.
The experimenter then explains that she has to leave the room for
a few minutes, but that the child can call her back immediately
by ringing the bell. The child is told that if he waits for the
experimenter to return on her own, he'll get the better treat; if
he rings the bell, he'll get the treat he doesn't like as much.
Once the experimenter leaves, she watches the child through a one-way
mirror or video camera.)
This experiment and others have found that those young children
who are able to delay gratification the longest tended to approach
the situation differently than those who rang the bell early and
settled for the lesser reward. The children who waited usually distracted
themselves by thinking about things other than the treats. Typically,
they found something to play with while they were alone in the room.
Those who rang the bell early tended to focus their thoughts during
the waiting period on the reward. In other words, it's easier for
a child to wait for a cookie if he plays with a toy than if he simply
stares at the cookie jar and thinks about how good the treat will
taste.
Those children who came up with strategies to delay gratification
in some of Dr. Mischel's studies had some surprising and long-term
advantages over those who rang the bell soon after they were left
alone. Ten years or more after they were tested, the children who
could distract themselves were found to have done better academically
and appeared to handle frustration better than their peers.
Although early patients and higher school performance were correlated,
it's unclear whether the former causes the latter. Still, it makes
intuitive sense that teaching a child better skills at delaying
gratification will help him later on.
So what can you do? If you're trying to help your child become more
patient and less frustrated, the first place to look is in the mirror.
Young children are very sensitive to how their parents delay gratification.
If you aren't patient in dealing with your own frustrations, your
child will probably act that way, too.
Here are some things to try:
- Adjust your expectations to the age of your child and the situation.
Remember that kindergartners have a very different sense of time
than teenagers do. To a five-year-old, a delay of an hour may
seem like an eternity. Also keep in mind that children become
more impatient when they're under stress.
- Suggest things for your child to think about while he's waiting.
Without such suggestions, many young children focus their thoughts
on things that will probably make them more impatient, such as
how good a piece of candy will taste or how much fun it will be
to play with a toy. Teaching your child to distract himself when
he has to wait will make the waiting less frustrating.
- Get involved in projects with your child that require you both
to be patient. At first, these should be projects in which the
delays are measured in minutes, not hours or days. As he becomes
more proficient at postponing gratification, you can shift to
longer, more complex projects.
Baking cookies together, for example, is a wonderful way for your
child to begin practicing patience. It may feel like it takes a
long time to go from mixing the dough to letting the cookies cool
once they're out of the oven, but the child can see the steps involved
in each stage, and learn to distract himself for relatively short
periods of time. Most important, he gets to eat the results at the
end.
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