Help Your Child Master This Skill for Success in Life - Part 2

As we discussed in last week's blog post, a key concept to help our children to master is that of delayed gratification. This is the ability to put off or resist an immediate reward in order to gain a larger reward later. Helping our sons and daughters learn this important skill can set them up for greater success and satisfaction in life.

Lets look at several simple ways we can teach our children how to delay gratification:

·     Play Impulse Control Games- When our kids are young, an easy way to teach and practice delayed gratification is by playing impulse control games like “Simon Says”, “Red Light / Green Light”, or “Follow the Leader”.

·     Teach About Feelings vs. Behaviors- Help children control their impulses by helping them learn the difference between feelings and behaviors. For example, if your young child throws or hits things when he or she gets angry, you could explain that although he or she is feeling mad, it is not okay to act out because of that anger. Understanding the difference between feelings and behaviors will help your child better control impulses.

·      Practice Problem Solving Skills- Problem solving skills are essential to delayed gratification.  Help your child learn how to think about the pros and cons to decisions before he or she acts. For smaller decisions, kids can mentally think or talk about the pros and cons of a decision. However, for larger decisions, encourage your child to make a list of the pros and cons of each option he or she is considering.

·      Provide Clear and Consistent Rules and Expectations- Keeping clear and consistent family rules and expectations as your children are growing allows them to gain firsthand experience of the impact of the choices they make. They can use that experience and apply it to decisions outside of the home, learning their actions have consequences and that some decisions are better than others.

·      Model Delayed Gratification- One of the best ways to teach your children how to delay gratification is to model it. Let your son or daughter see you put off an immediate reward for a later, longer lasting one, and talk about it with him or her.  If, for example, your family loves to eat sweets, you might model to your children that you choose to have a nice dessert once or twice a week, rather than eating candy daily.   By waiting to eat your dessert and talking about your reasons for doing it, you model healthier eating habits and a willingness to delay gratification in your life.

Delayed gratification is a very important skill for children of all ages to master. When kids are young, the consequences of impulsive decisions are usually fairly small.  As children grow, the consequences of their decisions are much greater. Many young people, for example, look forward to graduating from high school, but dread moving on to college or technical training.  The reward for those extra years of schooling is greater financial security and more control over many aspects of one’s life.  Watch for ways to help your children learn the power of delayed gratification for making better decisions in life.

Help Your Child Master This Skill for Success in Life

As parents, we desire to help our children grow to be relatively happy and able to easily provide for themselves in adulthood.  One of the keys to both comes through helping our children master is the skill of delayed gratification. In a nutshell, delayed gratification is the ability to put off or resist a small temptation now, in order to gain a larger reward later. For example, a teenager faced with choice of hanging out with friends or studying for a math test the next day would be practicing delayed gratification by choosing to study now and hang out with friends after taking the test. Helping our kids to learn the value of delaying gratification can set them up to be more successful later in life, as numerous studies have demonstrated.

Psychologist Dr. Walter Mischel performed a now famous study on delayed gratification in the 1960s. His test was simple. Children were brought one at a time into an empty room save for a table with marshmallows. The instructor told each child that he would be leaving the room for a few moments and the child could eat one marshmallow while he was away, but if he or she waited until he returned, the child could eat two marshmallows. Not surprisingly, many of the children chose not to wait and ate their marshmallow before the instructor returned. However, several children were able to delay their gratification and receive the two marshmallows. Dr. Mischel followed that group of children for about 50 years after the experiment, examining how the ability to delay gratification affected many aspects of their lives. He found that the children who were able to delay gratification had lower BMIs as adults, less addiction rates, higher SAT scores, and even a lower rate of divorce.  Dr. Mischel also noted that the children who showed great self-control were “more able to sustain effort and deal with frustration” when pursuing their goals.

This study greatly illustrates the importance of teaching children how to have self-control and delay gratification. As parents, there are many simple ways we can teach and model to our children how to delay gratification.  We will look at ways to do this in next week’s blog.

Tough Choices Can Lower Stress and Head Off Crises in Your Family

My husband and I have spent decades working hard in our careers, raising our wonderful children and volunteering. We recently made the decision to move to our dream home, a beautiful place just outside of Boerne Texas, with scenic acreage and lots of wildlife. As you might imagine, a lot goes into getting a house ready to sell, searching for and buying a new home, and the actual move from one house to another. In order to make this dream come true, I made the decision to put my business on hold for the last several weeks.  Only then could I focus on making the move as low-stress and smooth as possible.

We all have many demands on our time and energy in our roles as parent, spouse, employee or student, and more. Occasionally, a family need will come up that requires a huge amount of both. Unless you have any reserves of time and energy, you will either find yourself in a crisis or having to make some tough choices about what to put on hold to address the issue at hand.

Being clear on your priorities and being willing to shift time and energy spent elsewhere to your family’s more pressing needs can help you head off crises in a very busy life. When you do this with the utmost love and respect for your family, you’re making sure that they remain a top priority in your life.

What choices have you made in your life to put your family first in times of need?