Life in Balance: Amit Chaudhary’s Blog
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The secret of self-control, on Marshmallow Test by Jonah Lehrer in New Yorker

Summary & Notes:
1.Delaying gratification results in achievement. The child who could wait fifteen minutes had an S.A.T. score that was, on average, two hundred and ten points higher than that of the kid who could wait only thirty seconds. “If you can deal with hot emotions, then you can study for the S.A.T. instead of watching television,” Mischel says. “And you can save more money for retirement. It’s not just about marshmallows.”

2.To create self-control, move it or yourself away from it.

What, then, determined self-control? Mischel’s conclusion, based on hundreds of hours of observation, was that the crucial skill was the “strategic allocation of attention.” Instead of getting obsessed with the marshmallow—the “hot stimulus”—the patient children distracted themselves by covering their eyes, pretending to play hide-and-seek underneath the desk, or singing songs from “Sesame Street.” Their desire wasn’t defeated—it was merely forgotten. “If you’re thinking about the marshmallow and how delicious it is, then you’re going to eat it,” Mischel says. “The key is to avoid thinking about it in the first place.”

3. It is both, nature and nurture.

“you might not practice delay as much and you’ll never figure out how to distract yourself. Then you won’t develop the best delay strategies, and those strategies won’t become second nature.”

My (Amit’s) own belief is, genes give some a head start.

4. It can be controlled.

Mischel has found a shortcut. When he and his colleagues taught children a simple set of mental tricks—such as pretending that the candy is only a picture, surrounded by an imaginary frame—he dramatically improved their self-control. The kids who hadn’t been able to wait sixty seconds could now wait fifteen minutes.

5. The real challenge is turning those tricks into habits, and that requires years of diligent practice.

“This is where your parents are important,” Mischel says. “Have they established rituals that force you to delay on a daily basis? Do they encourage you to wait? And do they make waiting worthwhile?” According to Mischel, even the most mundane routines of childhood—such as not snacking before dinner, or saving up your allowance, or holding out until Christmas morning—are really sly exercises in cognitive training”

My (Amit’s) own favorite, keep a wishlist for them.

Po Bronson is a favorite writer of mine including his startup and technology work culture articles in Wired incl. Gen Equity which were combined into the book: The Nudist on the Late Shift and the one on people pondering about their lives: What Should I Do With My Life?

He wrote an article which is eye opening. Po Bronson’s The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids in New York Magazine. It is a 5 page article, so I summarized it here.

Short summary:

-85 percent of American parents think it’s important to tell their kids that they’re smart. But a growing body of research strongly suggests, giving kids the label of “smart” might actually be causing nonperformance.

-Takeaway from the study on praise versus effort. “When we praise children for their intelligence, we tell them that this is the name of the game: Look smart, don’t risk making mistakes.” Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control,” she explains. “They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.”
-Parents’ pride in their children’s achievements: It’s so strong that “when they praise their kids, it’s not that far from praising themselves.”

-To be effective, researchers have found, praise needs to be specific. Sincerity of praise is also crucial.

-Dweck’s research on overpraised kids strongly suggests that image maintenance becomes their primary concern—they are more competitive and more interested in tearing others down. A raft of very alarming studies illustrate this.

-When students transition into junior high, some who’d done well in elementary school inevitably struggle in the larger and more demanding environment. Those who equated their earlier success with their innate ability surmise they’ve been dumb all along. Their grades never recover because the likely key to their recovery—increasing effort—they view as just further proof of their failure.
-But it turns out that the ability to repeatedly respond to failure by exerting more effort—instead of simply giving up—is a trait well studied in psychology. People with this trait, persistence, rebound well and can sustain their motivation through long periods of delayed gratification. Persistence turns out to be more than a conscious act of will; it’s also an unconscious response (a chemical reaction you develop), governed by a circuit in the brain. It monitors the reward center of the brain, and like a switch, it intervenes when there’s a lack of immediate reward, telling the rest of the brain, “Don’t stop trying. There’s dopa [the brain’s chemical reward for success] on the horizon.-The brain has to learn that frustrating spells can be worked through. “A person who grows up getting too frequent rewards will not have persistence, because they’ll quit when the rewards disappear.”

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What to do\Actions (Some from article, some mine at the end):

-Develop the mind-set that the way to bounce back from failure is to work harder.

-Social Praiser: What would it mean, to give up praising our children so often? In the first stage, I fell off the wagon around other parents when they were busy praising their kids. I didn’t want Luke to feel left out.

-Specific-type praise: This was easier said than done.Every night he has math homework and is supposed to read a phonics book aloud. Each takes about five minutes if he concentrates, but he’s easily distracted. So I praised him for concentrating without asking to take a break. If he listened to instructions carefully, I praised him for that. After soccer games, I praised him for looking to pass, rather than just saying, “You played great.” And if he worked hard to get to the ball, I praised the effort he applied. Just as the research promised, this focused praise helped him see strategies he could apply the next day. It was remarkable how noticeably effective this new form of praise was.

-Reasons for parents being the real praise junkies: 

• Praising him for just a particular skill or task felt like I left other parts of him ignored and unappreciated.

• We put our children in high-pressure environments, seeking out the best schools we can find, then we use the constant praise to soften the intensity of those environments and hide our expectations behind constant glowing praise. The duplicity became glaring to me.

• Offering praise has become a sort of panacea for the anxieties of modern parenting. In those few hours together, we want them to hear the things we can’t say during the day—We are here for you, we believe in you.

-Cultivate habits and awareness of effort and it’s rewards. Also, focus on improvements due to effort.

-Ensure they at times are beyond their comfort zone, experience failure and work to success from there. The movie, “Meet the Robinsons” has a good example of handling failure.
-When someone praises your child, instead of saying Thanks! (it was hard work! ), deflect it a bit, saying “Thanks for your words”.
-Work together, one parent cannot do it by himself\herself and work for the Child’s growth, not our own emotional needs.

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One example study from the many in article:

For the past ten years, psychologist Carol Dweck and her team at Columbia (she’s now at Stanford) studied the effect of praise on students in a dozen New York schools. Her seminal work—a series of experiments on 400 fifth-graders—paints the picture most clearly.

Dweck sent four female research assistants into New York fifth-grade classrooms. The researchers would take a single child out of the classroom for a nonverbal IQ test consisting of a series of puzzles.

The test was difficult, designed for kids two years ahead of their grade level. Predictably, everyone failed. But again, the two groups of children, divided at random at the study’s start, responded differently. Those praised for their effort on the first test assumed they simply hadn’t focused hard enough on this test. “They got very involved, willing to try every solution to the puzzles,” Dweck recalled. “Many of them remarked, unprovoked, ‘This is my favorite test.’ ” Not so for those praised for their smarts. They assumed their failure was evidence that they weren’t really smart at all. “Just watching them, you could see the strain. They were sweating and miserable.”.

Having artificially induced a round of failure, Dweck’s researchers then gave all the fifth-graders a final round of tests that were engineered to be as easy as the first round. Those who had been praised for their effort significantly improved on their first score—by about 30 percent. Those who’d been told they were smart did worse than they had at the very beginning—by about 20 percent.

Dweck had suspected that praise could backfire, but even she was surprised by the magnitude of the effect. “Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control,” she explains. “They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.”

You might also want to read my earlier summary of Secrets of greatness: Practice and Hard work bring success: Articles on becoming Great. The key: Time, Smart Hard work & Visualization

Somehow long trips have appealed to me, the chance of seeing new places, meeting people, really have deep, new and different experiences.

Aha, what an idea.

I will blog over the next few days about some from other people’s lives that stood out.

Around the World… with kids, 28 countries in one year

The Highams, a Silicon Valley based family traveled with their two children, aged 8 and 11 in 2005-2006 around the world. The trip was one year in duration, 10 years in planning, with a minimal budget of U$120,000.

The Countries they visited: Iceland, England, France, Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Dubai, U.A.E, Tanzania, Mauritius, Singapore, Japan, China, Thailand, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Panama, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Belize. The children kept up with their school work during the trip.

The above link is to the San Jose Mercury News article, the Highams also have an informative website called Armageddon Pills which includes an FAQ, Some stories, Pictures in a gallery or on a map, How to plan your own trip and the book they are writing.

Here are some pictures from their trip:

Lavender’s Hormone Havoc
Lavender and other fragrant oils may cause breast growth in boys. Pediatric endocrinologist Clifford Bloch of the University of Colorado at Denver diagnosed three otherwise healthy boys–ages four, seven and 10– with prepubertal gynecomastia, a rare condition that leads to breast growth in prepubescent males. They all had used lavender-scented soap and skin lotions, or shampoos or styling products that contained lavender oil and tea tree oil… From the Scientific American, Apr 2007 issue.

The condition went away when the lavender treatment was stopped. Lavender is quite popular in many products due to it’s superb smell and known effects on stress reduction, this was my first reading on any adverse effect. This was surely surprising to I read\learn.

And here is another article for contrast on not getting too cautious when raising kids: We Protect Kids From Everything But Fear

I read a blog posting by Erin Pavlina: Children vs. Purpose: Do the two mix?

It’s timing was interesting as a few people I know have or are having children and our child became 3 year old recently, giving me enough space to think with somewhat experience and hopefully insight.

My own difficulties were not from if I do someother things, what will it take away from my child, but more of, what should I drop from other areas of my life due to the new things in life.
My letter to new parents, especially for the first two years in forms of suggestions

• Get help when the new born comes, particularly for the first few months. Ask grandparents to come(if possible) for a few months, one at a time, get a maid to clean up, iron clothes and even cook a little. Grandparents are great also because they have done it all and are mostly wise and cool at handling child issues.
• Make a conscious decision of what you will drop from your life else things will drop anyways, but without your knowing. Hints: Meeting with friends will happen less, so will Movies or or TV books that you read for leisure. The career and success by hard work (> 40 hours per week) will go on a hold or take away from other areas including sleep and health.
• Get healthy and stay healthy, especially if you have a sendetary career (like software development.) I would highly recommend Yoga.
• Finally some guideposts from a parent’s POV: First 3 months: Will be a blur, lot of tiredness and lack of sleep. Stick together and share the burden. Next 6 months: Getting better, but still tough going and requiring stamina but with more free time and energy. Go slow in bringing up old or new activities back. Next 9 months: The best and great fun, the baby responds, smiles and laughes, even walks and some words come out. Sleep times are now much longer (6-8) It is a delightful time. Try to ensure, baby sleeps in her bed\room by this age, 9-18 months. Next 12 months: It is easy from here on, things only reduce including no diapers and so on.

And if I were to reply to the question to Erin, it would be:

Question: Can one live their life with purpose if the purpose seems to be almost entirely for or through their children? And if a person feels like they need to be doing more, how do they do so without being as invested in their children as they could have been? - Laura

Yes one can live their life with purpose, if their purpose is entirely for their children. I know people who do and are happy. It is same as people who can work in a single company and job all their life and be happy. Satisfaction is a personal goal, everyone needs to find their own.

If I were to look at purpose as find one’s calling or even increase in one area of life (Career, Spiritual, Money), early parenthood is a tough time to make new leaps. Things are better off put on a hold for say 2 years.
If a person feels they need to do well and can(say afford daycare) and are happy with things happening in their child’s life, they should make changes to go and explore their purpose. It will take away from other parts of life including parenthood, however after a certain threshold, the impact of this will be less and less. Think of what will benefit the child as well as you, playtime or daycare will take the child away from the parents, but teach them social skills and let them have fun.

This threshold is yours to choose and know, for example, one threshold would be, you are happy making the child and having dinner, playing for an hour and teaching\learning for one hour each day. Another threshold would be, tucking in every night and reading a book. Choose it consciously.
Finally, I would point to the song, Cat’s in the cradle by Ugly Kid Joe among others.

POSITIVE PARENTING @ Pediatric Associates: by Karen Joslin, M.A.

The following scenario is a Mom remembering a tantrum when she was a four year old. Her father said it
was time for her nap:
She slammed the back door, breaking the window that was the top half of the door. She
screamed, shocked and horrified at the sound of the broken glass and at what she had done.
She remembers her father’s footsteps coming fast. He instantly picked her up out of the center of
the broken glass, and began scolding her. He carried her to her room, spanked her, and very
firmly told her to stay there until he came for her. She cried herself to sleep, and he came to get
her three hours later. He reminded her several times that she had ruined his day off, that he had
to clean up the broken glass and replace the window she had broken.
This father, believing he was teaching his daughter to behave, used a punishing, and excessively firm
parenting style. Though his intention was well meaning, the message was clear to her, she was a
naughty girl. Sadly, her focus was not remorse for losing control and breaking the window, but that
Daddy was scary, mean, and to be really careful when he was around. The long term results over time
with this approach if used again and again: He would want closeness with his daughter, and she would
wish he would travel more and be around home less. He would want her to trust him with her mistakes,
but she would lie, sneak and avoid him. Emotionally, she would learn not to trust her anger, and to hide
it. This would not serve her well in later life.
The good news is that these early recollections can help us learn to be the kind of parent we want to be,
and have better results. When asked, “What would you rather have happened?” one can begin to un-
derstand the emotional needs of the child. In our scenario, losing control and breaking the glass was a
shock, a terrible experience, and if handled positively, possibly a good life lesson to be learned.

What to Say and Do:
- The child may need help to calm and often a hug will calm both parent and child. Use few words
as an upset child does not hear or think well.

- Perhaps both Dad and daughter needed a time out, some space to consider what happened.

- Children need to make amends to feel worthwhile and loved. This child would have benefited
from helping Dad clean the mess.

- Being an intelligent and capable child, she didn’t need to be reminded that she ruined her father’s
day.

The blessing in positive parenting is that you always get another chance to handle it differently next
time. Anger comes from feeling a lack of control over oneself. The following tips can help both par-
ent and child do better.

Preventive Tips:
The teaching, the true discipline happens at good talk times.
- Learn from 20/20 hindsight. Have you let your child know what to expect specifically throughout
the day? Do you offer choices? Are you doing too much for him when he can do it for himself?
Are your expectations reasonable? Have you recently had good connection with hugs and some
fun?

- Encouragement builds courage and opens the heart to learning. Tell him you know he is very
capable. He will learn to recognize his feelings and get what he needs without getting so upset.
Teach him to recognize his feelings using books and games and role play. Inquire of children’s
librarians, teachers or bookstores to learn of good resources.

- Check his perception about the cause (“When I felt so angry, I slammed the door”) and the effect
( “I broke a very expensive window and could have been terribly hurt”). Finally, explore together
what he might do differently next time?

- Be sure to model the behavior you want to see.
Encourage! Focus on all the good.

From the Bellevue Pediatratic associations newsletter (www.MyPediatricAssociates.com)

My thoughts:

As a father of a 3 year old girl, this was interesting to read and had many lessons.

I have noticed that it helps to be aware when one is very tired and more likely to snap. (Tired = catch all word for fatigued, in physical pain, head ache, busy with still lots to do, strict expectations of time and results) Awareness itself comes with having space to think, observe and making a practise of it with other activities like Yoga, Mediation, Walking, Morning or Night quiet time.

This came in from our local doctor’s clinic, so is good to see them pro-actively them parents.