News

Well I am reporting on the children. Yesterday I gave all three of them (you can't exclude a four-year-old without serious consequences) a mini Hershey bar, and explained that if they still had it tomorrow morning they could trade it for a bigger one, but they had to keep it with them all day. I did this to present more temptation during the long school day.

E, age 9, instantly declared she was saving hers. This created an avalanche effect of mimicry. I'm not sure how the boys would have reacted without her to emulate. Not so much conclusive. She handed her mini bar back this morning matter-of-factly and is now hoarding the bigger version. I don't think she's going to eat that anytime soon either.

Preston, age 4, kept his with him all day and often lovingly took it out and looked at it, but it degenerated over the course of the day from a perfectly respectable mini candy bar to a completely liquid form, sloshing around inside its skin of wrapper, and then a tiny, crumpled, hardened wad of chocolate and wrapper that probably was only appealing to the dogs. He presented it to me this morning with almost relief.

Skyler, now 7 (!) was extremely excited (in fact he met me outside the bathroom door this morning) to have not eaten his candy; it was, however, cracked in half, which he was worried would ruin the deal. I would feel more positive about this response except again, he is a copycat, and he got the idea from E.

Maybe the study went perfectly fine and I'm just too much of a pessimist to believe any of my children have self-control. Because the alternative is believing they all do.

Just kidding, I wouldn't eat my children. They're too stringy.

I came across a fascinating article today that talks about Epigenetics: the study of the chemicals that cause your genes to turn on and off. The idea is that although changing your DNA is impossible, changing the behavior of your genes is simple. So much so, in fact, that we all do it. And more crucially, once we've changed the behavior of our genes, the behavior of our children's genes also change. So, for example, if you overeat for a year in your childhood, your children and THEIR children will have altered DNA, practically speaking. In fact, you will have shortened their lives by up to 32 years. (This study was done on children from an area of Sweden called Overkalix.)

Another example: what if you smoke? A lot? What if you started before you hit puberty? Turns out you not only put yourself at risk for cancer, etc -- you also put your children and grandchildren at risk for various health problems, and a significantly shortened lifespan.

When Pembrey, Bygren and Golding looked at the sons of those 166 early smokers, it turned out that the boys had significantly higher body mass indexes than other boys by age 9. That means the sons of men who smoke in prepuberty will be at higher risk for obesity and other health problems well into adulthood. It's very likely these boys will also have shorter life spans, just as the children of the Overkalix overeaters did. "The coherence between the ALSPAC and Overkalix results in terms of the exposure-sensitive periods and sex specificity supports the hypothesis that there is a general mechanism for transmitting information about the ancestral environment down the male line," Pembrey, Bygren, Golding and their colleagues concluded in the European Journal of Human Genetics paper. In other words, you can change your epigenetics even when you make a dumb decision at 10 years old. If you start smoking then, you may have made not only a medical mistake but a catastrophic genetic mistake.

Is anyone else horrified by the implication that we can ruin the lives of the generations to come by our stress levels, bad health, etc?

It seems a simple challenge: take a four-year-old, give him a marshmallow, and leave the room. Will he scarf that marshmallow right away? What if you tell him that if it's still there when you get back in 15 minutes, he'll get a second marshmallow? Will he resist temptation?

The answer depends on the four-year-old, and surprisingly much depends on whether he has that sort of self-control or not. If he does succeed in resisting the marshmallow, he's much more likely to succeed in school and then in life as he grows to adulthood. If he stuffs it in his mouth as soon as you leave the room, he's much more likely to be impulsive, have behavioral problems, and fail at school as he matures.

Read the article for the full, very interesting, report on this unique test of will, especially if you are or plan on ever being responsible for the success of a child. Delaying gratification is a skill nobody really talks about, but one which can determine whether your child grows to be a failure or a success.

I tried this test on Preston, who (as we all know) has his share of behavioral problems, severe enough that the State classifies him as "special needs." With great ceremony and solemnity I presented him with a marshmallow. I placed it on the shelf in his room right at eye level and within reach. I explained that it was his, and he could eat it--BUT--if it was still on that shelf when I came back, I would give him a second marshmallow also, and he could eat both.

Then I left for 15 minutes. I waited with mild anxiety. Would he fail? Was he eating it RIGHT NOW? When I went back into the room he was sitting on his bed, hands clasped together between his knees, staring straight in front of him into space. This is his "time out" pose, oddly enough. And there was the marshmallow, sitting right where I'd left it, a foot away from him. When I came in, he leapt to his feet with a grin on his face, completely pleased with himself. And he scarfed those two marshmallows at the same time, stuffing them into his face with total satisfaction.

After reading the article I think I'll try it on my older kids, too--it's important information to know, whether your kid has impulse control or not. For one thing, you can teach them tricks to help them control their impulses if you know that they failed the test. I am going to buy mini candy bars, and big candy bars. I'll tell Skyler and E (6 and 9) that they can have the little one now, and it's theirs--BUT--if they bring it to me tomorrow morning uneaten, they get the bigger version of the candy bar also. We'll see how they do. Care to place bets?