So allow me to let you in on a secret.  If you have a kid that is four years old or later, you can find out his or her destiny in life from a simple experiment with cookies.  Things like being well or badly behaved, to SAT scores, to their BMI index as an adult.  And it has nothing to do with whether the cookies are chocolate chip or raisin (stupid raisins, stay out of my cookie!).  It has to do with willpower.

I heard about this from a special podcast by WNYC’s Radio Lab called Mischel’s Marshmallows.  Radio Lab is a fascinating show that explores science in creative and engaging way.  I would highly recommend it if you are a podcast listener, and you could also catch it on NPR on the weekends.  The gist of this particular podcast talks about an experiment conducted by Walter Mischel in the 1960’s.  He had three daughters from ages two to five, and noticed that around age four, they started to exhibit to ability to delay gratification through willpower.  He then conducted an experiment on 500 preschool kids where he would have one marshmallow or cookie on a table in an isolated room.  He told each child that they could either have one cookie now, or wait and have two cookies later.  Then he left the room and video taped them through a one-way mirror.  As you can imagine, this is pure torture for kids and there are many funny videos on YouTube recreating this experiment.  Some kids caved after a minute, and some kids made it to the end at twenty minutes.  The average was around 7 or 8 minutes.  Five or six years later, many of the kids attended the same school as his daughters, so completely informally, he asked his daughters how these kids were doing.  He found out amazingly that the kids that could hold out the longest were doing better in school.  When the kids were 14 to 17 years old, he did a follow up study.  The differences were remarkable, there was a 210 point difference in SAT scores between the kids who could wait 1 minute and ones that could wait 20 minutes.  That is a huge difference that can’t possibly be chance!  The kids that waited the longest went to better colleges, had better GPAs and the parents reported that they were better behaved.  The other kids more likely to be classified as problem kids and bullies, and be suspended from school.  Mischel extended and expanded the study to when the original kids reached their forties.  The kids who could wait 20 minutes, went further in their education, had better jobs, and were even skinnier.

So does this mean that this seemingly innocuous experiment with cookies at the age of four can predict how successful you are in life?  There is a debate on whether this is a hard-wired trait or a product of upbringing.  Can you teach your child techniques to distract themselves from the temptation, or are they forever doomed if they fail the cookie test?  Either way, it is pretty scary to think that I could just pull my 5-year-old daughter aside right now, and have a pretty good idea how she will turn out.  Should I do it?  Or should I just wait to see how her life unfolds?  I’m so tempted but yet don’t want to bias my view of her.

Should Momisodes torture Babisodes with the cookie test next year?  Of course, this would make for an awesome time lapse video for a blog post, so maybe I will try it.  Stop by to visit me at mommy bytes to see more adventures with our daughter and her big brother.

Light “Off”

Light “On”

Light “Off”

“On.”…. “Off.”

On- Off- On- Off- On- Off….

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

And the experimentation continues….

That seems to be the ongoing theme these days. My daughter has managed to find every possible light switch in the house that she can pull up, stand on a chair, or scale a wall to get to. I read somewhere that this is normal behavior for a toddler, so I’m biting my tongue (hard) as I try my best not to lapse into a seizure here.

I mean it’s kind of neat watching as she discovers how the world works. It’s initial novelty was amazing. Seeing her eyes light up as she illuminates a room by a mere flip of a switch.

But soon after,…it was just a game.

Believe me, I lost. I’m guessing there are a few terrorists out there, fixing to lock up some poor hostages in a room full of switches and a 2-year old, flickering them into submission.

I recently read an article from a well-respected mom author. She claims that a child’s desire to learn is just a part of nature. They are merely “scientists researching cause and effect”. And if we, as parents, can turn off the nagging inclination to say, “stop!” then we can truly begin to see our children as constant unfolding miracles.

Well, my 2-year old daughter is certainly a little Einstein. There is no coincidence that her initials are E.M.C. And as for experimentation, yep, she does plenty of it. You see she has toys, lots of them. She has accumulated so many in recent weeks, that I can barely keep track of them. In fact, I don’t think she can either. So suddenly, toys from last month are practically new again, and toys from last year are
jackpot.

In early summer I made an impulse purchase. We passed the luring $1 dollar section of a store, always conveniently placed right at the front entrance. My daughter screamed, “Duckie, pink…mommy!” I thought, why not? One dollar for a more peaceful day of running errands, sure. Now if only I had the foresight to see that I was inviting a cheap, pink, plastic menace into my house, only to steal what little sanity I have left after 2 years.

Usually we keep the duck in the tub for bath time. Somehow, the pink creature got loose and found it’s way into my living room. Now I’m no scientist, but this duck, has no feet. Its pink effervescence summoned my Madame Curie over to explore. On one side of the duck, there is a round hole that allows access to fill it with water. So of course with the faucet out of her reach, what else could she use instead? She scoured the room. Minutes passed before she managed to excavate old wooden shapes tucked beneath an end table, and filled the duck with perfectly shaped cylinders to fit right into the
hole in the duck; Genius, right? Negative.

Cause: Pink duck full of wooden cylinder shapes.
Effect: Mom loses her mind trying to get them out.

Did I mention that the duck is made of plastic? Hard plastic? An unyielding, cheap, fluorescent plastic with just one hole the same diameter of 1 cylinder. Oh, and she managed to wedge in five of them? Five little soldiers all lined up in there, waiting to take me down.
For two hours I tried everything. Cutting the hole larger. Shaking. Shaking gently. Tilting it. I did everything short of throwing the stupid $1 dollar toy into the trash. Then it happened. A voice over my shoulder said, “Here honey, let me help you.” OH NO! No freaking way. I panicked. My mind raced. I had to figure this out, and quick. Sure no life was on the line, but now my sanity and pride were at stake. But how do I get those damn things out? Hmm. A light bulb flickered above my head… Ah ha, yes! And off into the kitchen I went to find the tool to prove my hypothesis.

Approximately five minutes later, all 5 cylinders were in my captivity, and the duck was put away on a high shelf. I fished each little bugger out and made sure my daughter watched and learned from my own experiment. I think it’s safe to say, that the next time I see anything go near this duck, my nagging inclination to say, “Stop!” will definitely be turned on.
Notice the Scotch tape. Listen up moms. Washable crayons, stain remover, AND scotch tape are toddler essentials