Delayed gratification in children? Well, tell me something more challenging. Children don’t like being asked to wait for something. They want everything instantly.
Unfortunately, their impatience and lack of self-control can spread to adults as well. When my kids are wailing because I’m taking too long to cut their banana, I admit that I snap, “Just wait a minute!”
And before I know it, I’m caught up in this vicious cycle: my children’s impatience makes me impatient, which makes them even more impatient, and so on until things get out of hand.
I know I can’t give in to their whining instead of waiting silently. I believe in teaching kids about self-control and delayed gratification, as do all parents.
But the way I go about things might not be always right.
Instead of expecting 2- and 3-year-olds to gain self-control abilities on their own (though that would be nice, wouldn’t it? ), I need to model and educate them.
Instant Gratification vs Delayed Gratification
Instant gratification happens when you fulfil your child’s desires instantly which gives them an instant ‘happy high’. However, they come back to you soon with another demand because they are unsatisfied. They didn’t experience the satisfaction long enough.
Delayed gratification is having the patience to wait in order to gain the happiness of owning something for long-term fulfilment and satisfaction.
Self-control and delayed gratification are valuable life skills that may be mastered over a period of time.
This is fantastic news for us parents! It means we can do something constructive and positive to teach our children about delaying gratification.
5 Ways to Encourage Delayed Gratification in Children
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Children who learn to distract themselves and resist their temptations turn into adults who will learn to save, wait and cope with uncomfortable situations.
So, what enables the children to postpone gratification? Here are five research-tested tactics that I am implementing with my own children based on my reading of some studies. Delayed gratification benefits long last and stay with your children as they enter into adulthood.
I. Out of Sight, Out of Mind
Keeping temptations out of your children’s sight is the most efficient method to keep them from becoming impatient and overwhelmed.
If you don’t want your kids to ask and whine for more chips and cookies, put them away in the cupboard. If you want your kids to limit their screen usage, stop reading Facebook on your iPad all day.
Removing temptation may appear to be strict policing, but as your children become older, you may explain the objective of this method to them so that they internalise it and begin doing it for themselves.
II. Reward Good Behaviour
“Don’t punish bad behaviour, reward excellent behaviour!” – you’ve probably heard this before. This is my favourite delayed gratification quote.
A very popular study known as ‘The Marshmallow Test‘ was conducted by Walter Mischel and a team of researchers at Stanford University in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
In this study, the researchers found that when children were encouraged to think about the desirable features of the reward (such as “the marshmallows are tasty and chewy”), they were less likely to wait. Children became obsessed with the marshmallow and wanted to eat it.
So, if you want your youngster to wait patiently for a reward, don’t put too much emphasis on the prize. For example, don’t tell your kids, “If you’re quiet, you can have a piece of wonderful candy after we’re done,” the next time you go grocery shopping.
They’ll want to collect as many sweets as they can before they reach the checkout line if they’re thinking about candy all the time! In a circumstance where you can’t deliver the reward immediately away, use a different technique.
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III. Thinking Happy Thoughts
When the researchers urged the kids to “imagine fun ideas,” they waited even longer. This is a very interesting study.
Some of the kids chose to “simply sing a song” or “go to the stars.” Others diverted their attention by imagining a different food, such as pretzels if they were attempting to avoid eating a marshmallow.
Some children were given a Slinky to play with while they waited in one variation of the test, and the majority of children with a Slinky successfully waited 15 minutes.
The researchers sought to distract the children in another version by telling them to think unpleasant thoughts, such as falling down and harming themselves.
In this situation, the children were terrible at waiting for their reward. They evidently used the marshmallow to distract themselves from their bad thoughts. Thus, reminding youngsters of punishment or other negative consequences to distract them may backfire.
The takeaway? While distraction can be useful, it should be enjoyable rather than stressful.
IV. Focus on the Idea, Not the Result
Abstraction can be a successful method to make your children learn not to focus on the result of a particular event.
When children were told to think of the marshmallow in an abstract fashion, such as as a painting or a cloud, they waited longer. By emphasising cerebral processes over “hot” emotional impulses, Walter Mischel believed that abstraction helped the youngsters “cool” their demands for the snack.
When children were told to think of the marshmallow in an abstract fashion, such as as a painting or a cloud, they waited longer. By emphasising cerebral processes over “hot” emotional impulses, Walter Mischel believed that abstraction helped the youngsters “cool” their demands for the snack.
In case your children are more focussed on the temptation then Encourage your children to think about the object’s abstract features rather than its attractive properties.
For example, if they’re demanding you to turn on the TV, ask them what shape it is and take them on a scavenger search for similar forms throughout the home. Alternatively, encourage them to envision it as a magical picture frame and ask them to describe what they “see” in it.
However, keep in mind that the youngsters in the original study were 4.5 years old. This method is most likely to succeed with children aged 4 and up, rather than 18-month-olds who have yet to establish abstract thought.
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V. Self-directed Speech
Despite the fact that the researchers did not explicitly train them in this method, some of the youngsters chose to use self-directed speech to help them wait.
They told themselves things like, “I need to wait so I can grab two marshmallows.” The self-directed speech was associated with increased wait times.
As a result, parents should teach their children simple phrases that remind them to manage their desires. If you don’t want your child to beg for an infinite supply of cookies, tell her ahead of time that she’ll only get one and have her repeat the phrase “only one cookie” before you hand it over. If she finds the limit distressing, she can repeat to herself, “only one cookie.”
Bottomline
These tactics aren’t very difficult to comprehend, as you can see. They’re as simple as teaching our kids their ABCs, yet they could be much more important to their academic success. If Mischel and his colleagues were able to educate some children to use these tactics in just 15 minutes, we can be confident that we can do the same with our own children.
Learning delay of gratification is very important for our children so they grow into more conscious adults and make thoughtful choices for themselves. However, the crucial thing is to practice and reinforce it consistently.
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