Marshmallow Trick and the Money Saving Pig...

Awhile ago, my class was visited by an incredible speaker who presented at least three hours worth of exercises counselors can use in group therapy. I mean, this wasn't some boring presenter who had us sticking toothpicks in our eyelids to keep them open like in the cartoons. He was from New Orleans and seemed to be a mix of a counselor and Matthew McConaughey in the way that he was all over the map and had a cool, smooth talking southern accent. We were all depressed when his speaking time was up, but there was still so much more for us to learn. He set all of his props (mousetraps, etc.) all around the room and had us choose which topic we were most curious about learning. On my way home that night, I started thinking that someday when I had time I would relay some of the cool things I learned that night and I figured I could start with the Marshmallow study...

The Study: Marshmallow Study (I chose this article because it is simple, but I also really liked the money saving, delayed gratification piggy bank! There's a link...)

Essentially, there was a study done on small children where the children were placed one at a time in a room with a marshmallow and were told by an adult that if they didn't eat the marshmallow, when the adult returned in 10 minutes, they would receive another marshmallow to eat (so two marshmallows total). I guess some kids didn't even make it through the directions before they were shoving their faces with marshmallowly goodness. Others occupied the 10 minute duration by singing to the marshmallow, licking the bottom and setting it back down, talking to it, and some, well, some just ate it.

Some time after the study, the conductors of the study did a couple of follow up sessions and discovered consistent results among the participants. The ones who ate the marshmallow (the instant gratification kids) had troubled lives, which usually meant divorce, jail time, lower income, etc. The ones who waited (the delayed gratification kids) had consistently better lives, which meant anything from higher education to longer marriages.

So with that said, I kept wondering when the speaker was telling this story, what my own child would do. I mean, she is half me (waits to spend a gift card until I am really, really sure I want something and waits 24 hours before making any major purchases when I see something I want) and half of my husband (can't stand the thought of a gift card burning a hole in his pocket). So I went home that night and decided to see how my daughter reacted to a mini-test. I didn't have marshmallows and she doesn't really like them anyway, so I used Cadbury Mini-eggs instead. Before I could even explain the directions, my just-home-from-gymnastics and wired little girl gobbled the egg up in one gulp! So then I thought "Well, that's okay, she didn't hear the directions and wasn't paying attention when I handed it to her" so I tried again. I set the egg on the table and explained the directions thoroughly to her. I set the timer and decided to start dinner. Two minutes later she had walked away, so I looked over to see how the egg was doing. It was still there, but it had giant chunks of chocolate taken out if it (keep in mind this is an egg smaller than a quarter). The sweet pastel coating had been licked and the faint blue color was all over the kitchen table. Two minutes after that, I looked over to see my daughter with her tongue stuck out as far as it could reach, slowly approaching the top of the egg. That is when I finally gave in and told her to take the egg. I figured out that she was set up to fail and that this wasn't the most scientific of experiments. She was hyper and tired. She was hungry and loves chocolate. Most importantly, she was my own child, so that alone means she wasn't going to do what I said. I think if I had to redo this, I would use another adult to explain the directions and I would choose a location that was more conducive to conducting egg experiments. Oh well! Anyway, it provided a bit of a laugh for our family and my daughter got some chocolate before dinner, so she was happy.

I did realize the importance of teaching delayed gratification to my daughter since she is definitely the princess of our family. I mean, when I lecture my husband for giving into her he says "...but she's cute!" So I think I definitely have my work cut out for me!