One Marshmallow or Two?

Have you heard about the “Marshmallow” experiment?

Walter Mischel, while a professor of psychology at Stanford, studied the concept of delayed gratification. His research project started in the 1960’s by tempting 4 yr olds with marshmallows. He left them in a room with one marshmallow on the table and told the child that if they didn’t eat it while he was gone (for 15 minutes!), then they would get to eat two marshmallows! Some kids ate the marshmallow immediately and others finally gave in after a delay. Still others were able to wait the full 15 minutes to get to eat two marshmallows.

Mischel went to on expand his research to see how the level of self –control as children predicted their success as a young adult. It turns out that the kids with a higher level of self-control had higher incomes, better health, less problems with drugs, and more satisfying relationships. You can read more about the study in this article in The New Yorker.

This is a key concept that you can work on with your children and teens using your allowance program.

By helping them set short-term and long-term savings goals, they will learn how to wait for bigger ticket purchases. Unfortunately we live in a world with instant everything…cell phone, texting, Twitter, and Facebook instant status updates. Our children are used to getting almost everything in a nano-second.

By using allowance, you will help them learn to delay gratification and according to the research, your children just may have more success (and more marshmallows) as an adult!