Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, Research-based Parenting Ideas To Help Kids Thrive

The Marshmallow Test is one of the most famous experiments in Psychology: Dr. Walter Mischel and his colleagues presented a preschooler with a marshmallow.  The child was told that the researcher had to leave the room for a period of time and the child could either wait until the researcher returned and have two marshmallows, or if the child couldn’t wait, they could call the researcher back by ringing a bell and just have one marshmallow.  The idea was to figure how delayed gratification develops, and, in later studies, understand its importance in our children’s lives and academic success. Dr. Mischel and his colleagues have followed some of the children he originally studied and have made all kinds of observations about their academic, social, and coping competence, and even their health later in life. But a new study by Dr. Tyler Watts casts some doubt on the original results.  In this episode we talk with Dr. Watts about the original work and some of its flaws (for example, did you know that the orig