What? I love biscuits...at least I'm honest about it.

"the present findings suggest that an effective attentional control system, as reflected in preschoolers’ ability to direct attention away from tempting aspects of the rewards in a delay-of-gratification task, may share a common mechanism with, or serve as a precursor for, long-term ability to inhibit attentional and behavioral responses, as reflected years later in performance on the go/no-go task. Moreover, because inefficient performance in the go/no-go task has been well documented as being associated with immature development of fronto-striatal and related circuitry, the findings suggest that temptation focus in the delay-of-gratification task at age 4 may already be a marker of the subsequent development of individual differences in this system in adolescence and adulthood." 

(Wikipedia) (maybe not the professional researcher's tool of choice but it sure is easy)

There is a much repeated psychological test performed on children; faced with a favourite snack of their choice they are told "now you're not to eat the biscuit until I return, then you can have two!" 

Woohoo!!

Some kids wait. Some kids eat the snack.
What would you have done? What would you want your children to do?

Personally I'd have finished the biscuit before the researcher had finished saying the word "now". According to the study this means that I was always likely to become a "less competent" teenager...check. And as an adult, have fewer friends...check. Meh.

I'm more than happy with this, if I was going to choose whether I was a waiter or a taker I'd have picked to be a taker because at least it's honest. As an adult the one thing I'm really no good at is lying. This gets me into trouble sometimes but I keep my integrity.

If you put a snack in front of a kid and tell them not to eat it you aren't you basically checking if they can lie to themselves? They DO want to eat it, it's not a bad thing to eat a snack, some people might argue it's bad to disobey an authority figure but where would we be if we all thought that? At church probably, with our slaves tied up outside. Nice.

I don't think being an incompetent teenager is any bad thing either, I was ruddy useless at most things. But when I was asked (true story) "now, do you want to do the washing up or do you want some chocolate?" I may have been too stupid, unlike the other child in this picture, to spot the clever psychological trick being played on me (yeah, genius, well done you) but I was honest. I'd like the chocolate, obviously (my sarcasm ain't new)
The other kid said she would rather do the washing up - guess who got the chocolate. Adults are sometimes ruddy horrible.
Thinking about it, what does that even prove except that she was cleverer than me and saw through the stupid game and I was naive, but honest? Again, I know which I'd pick to be now. (in case she's reading this, the other kid isn't horrible by the way, the grown-up in the story is horrible but she understood his ways better than me and is cleverer than me) (wow, Psara, cleverer than you? Surely not! You make a good point, but she is exceptionally clever so it's ok. Don't panic.)

Yes I don't have a LOT of friends now, but I have maybe 10 best friends, all over the world. It doesn't matter that I don't have a crowd of a million people to go to the pub with who all have some basic knowledge about my life when I have a few amazing friends who know me inside out. Not literally. Not all of them anyway.

Enough about me, what's this all got to do with the babies eh?
Well, as parents we feel a responsibility to bring up our children into the sorts of people we want them to be. On some level this is balls because we can't help who we are entirely as parents and that's bound to rub off a bit. I also don't think I want to bring up Mr Gubbles and Fusty to be like me.

The parental role of the children in the study is merely a footnote. Children who were subject to a broken promise before the test were more likely to take the biscuit, children who were subject to a kept promise were more likely to wait. That speaks volumes doesn't it?

Regardless of the psychological repercussions at stake, I'm pretty much going to try not to break promises to my children, and if that means that they end up having loads of friends then so be it.


Post Script:
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