The Marshmellow Experiment.

I first heard about this experiment in my sixth form year at school. Our Headmistress in her opening assembly speech talked about it as a study done on 4 year olds and how those 4 year olds were followed as they proceeded through high school. She used it as a way to inspire and encourage us as we entered into a new educational year.  I later heard about it again at university in one of my child development papers. You can read about the Stanford Marshmallow experiment by clicking on the link here, but  in short it is a test to see if a child has the ability or desire to delay gratification.  The Stanford study showed that those four year olds who deferred gratification as they grew up were better adjusted, more dependable and as high school students scored significantly better grades.

The study fascinated me then and years later as a parent I was anxious to see if my children processed this character trait.

Anyway we did the test on Lucy when she was 2 and tonight we tried it on Oliver who is a month off 3. You can see the results for yourselves. It is not a proper experiment as the subjects are supposed to be 4 and you are supposed to wait  20 minutes. But we are not researchers, just curious parents and by golly these videos have made us giggle.

Lucy's test 2009

Oliver's test 2012

All we can say is that our hope lies in Olli been really good at sport.