Below is a guest post by Jane Madison, an early childhood education expert and pre-K teacher at Saint Peter the Apostle School on Wilmington Island. To read her past guest posts on preparing your child for preschool, click here:

About twenty years ago, when I was working with 3 year olds, we had a child in our class who always had to be first. First at art, first served at the snack table, the first turn in a game, and even the first one called to get his book bag. He had to be first. And, if he wasn’t first, he would whine,”What about me, what about me?!” louder and louder, until he got what he wanted. Needless to say, that behavior really got on our nerves! What this little guy needed to learn was self-control!

Self-control is the ability to control one’s emotions, desires and actions by one’s own will, and is one of the most important skills we can help our children develop.

There is a famous experiment, conducted by Dr. Walter Mischel at Stanford University that supports this statement.

In the 1960s, a group of four-year olds were given a marshmallow and promised another, if they could wait 15 minutes before eating the first one. Some children could wait and others could not. They were then divided into three groups. Those who ate the marshmallow right away were moved to group A, and those who waited before eating the marshmallow were moved to group B. (Those who were able to wait for some time, but didn’t last the full 15 minutes were not included in any more research.) The researchers then followed the progress of each child into adolescence, and demonstrated that those children with the ability to wait were better adjusted and more dependable (determined by surveys of their parents and teachers), and scored an average of 210 points higher on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). (Shoda, Mischel,&Peake1990)

The research also showed that the children who, when they were four-year-olds, could not wait, as teens were troubled, indecisive, and less confident and still were unable to delay gratification.

This doesn’t mean that a child who cannot wait at the age of 4 is doomed to an unhappy life. On the contrary, self –control can be taught and learned through practice.

Dr David Walsh has written a book that will help you teach your child just that. The book, “No: Why Kids of All Ages Need To Hear It and Ways Parents Can Say It,” offers many ideas to help you teach your child the different skills needed for self management. He states that children want and need limits, and depend on their parents to set them. If you tell your child no, and then let him do it anyway, you are not allowing him to learn self-control.

In fact, he reproduced the Marshmallow Experiment while working on this book which can be viewed at
http://www.responsible-kids.net/marshmallowexperiment.html .

Some other ways to help your child learn to manage his own behavior are:
• Let them see how you gain control of your emotions when you are frustrated. Tell them how you are feeling, and what strategies you use to calm yourself down.
• Set limits and be consistent. If the rule is to sit at the table to eat, then enforce that rule. Don’t be wishy-washy!
• Help him learn to wait. Teach him to anticipate how delicious that milkshake will be after we finish doing errands, or how much fun it will be when it is his turn to jump off the diving board.
• Describe the behavior you want to see. If you don’t tell her how to behave, how will she know?
• Praise your child for showing self-control. Be very specific. ”You had to wait a long time before you got your piece of cake at the party. You waited so patiently.”

My co-teacher and I tried all of these techniques and more on our three year old friend. We deliberately made him wait until a few other students were served at snack while soothingly telling him he would get snack soon. We gave other children their paintbrushes first while encouraging him to be patient. We had him give the other children cups of juice before he got his own. By February, he still had to be first. He was still saying, “What about me, what about me?” I turned to my colleague and said,” You know what? I’m just going to let him go first.” That solved my problem, but I doubt it solved his.

I am not proud of that decision now, and fortunately I happen to know he has grown up to be a fine young man, but I did learn something important from working (and not working) with him. I can’t undo my past mistake, but I don’t have to repeat it. All I need is some patience and self-control!

If you have any comments or questions, contact Jane at jmadison@saintpetertheapostle.com .