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Mastering Self Control
January 13, 2015
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.
-Eleanor Roosevelt
-Eleanor Roosevelt
"The need to delay gratification, control impulses, and modulate emotional expression is the earliest and most ubiquitous demand that societies place on their children, and success at many life tasks depends critically on children's mastery of such self-control," reports James J. Heckman in his February 15, 2011 PNAS article, "A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety." The article noted...
"Policy-makers are considering large-scale programs aimed at self-control to improve citizens’ health and wealth and reduce crime. Experimental and economic studies suggest such programs could reap benefits. Yet, is self-control important for the health, wealth, and public safety of the population? Following a cohort of 1,000 children from birth to the age of 32, we show that childhood self-control predicts physical health, substance dependence, personal finances, and criminal offending outcomes, following a gradient of self-control. Effects of children's self-control could be disentangled from their intelligence and social class as well as from mistakes they made as adolescents. In another cohort of 500 sibling-pairs, the sibling with lower self-control had poorer outcomes, despite shared family background. Interventions addressing self-control might reduce a panoply of societal costs, save taxpayers money, and promote prosperity."
Contributed by Zvia Dover.
Contributed by Zvia Dover.
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Comments (4)
Displaying All 4 CommentsUnited States
I agree with Francis as well. Sometimes I think I should not read all the comments. I am truly concerned about how practitioners view families and the expectations for children that don't honor childhood. Thank you, Francis for the refreshing response.
Denver, CO, United States
I am very uneasy about this new direction! I think this is like everything else we are doing: it's not a question of self-control, it's a question of when we should expect children to exhibit self control. And like everything else, it's now earlier and earlier. Rather than focus on self control of young children, we should be encouraging experimentation, risk-taking, play in nature, a variety of challenging and interesting social and cultural experiences, and a whole-child approach to emotional development. Self-control can and should wait!
Takoma Park, MD, United States
As a Pre-K teacher, I find that self-control must be taught before the child begins the pre-k program. I have also found that there seem to be many households where the parents let the child make too many decisions. The child is in charge of the parent. This is not a good precedent for them to set. Then they wonder why their child is impulsive at school. We have been using Conscious Classroom Discipline which has really helped students communicate with each other, however it does not alway help with self-control as mentioned above.
United States
I concur with Francis!
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