Lucky Charms and Managing Others

When I poured a bowl of Lucky Charms for my seven-year-old son, he immediately started picking out and gobbling the marshmallows. “Stop!”, I said. “If you eat all of the marshmallows now, you won’t have any left after I pour the milk. 

The next day he did the same thing, so I rushed to pour the milk immediately after the cereal. “Surely that will curtail this dry-marshmallow free for all”, I thought to myself. As this sequence played out a few more times, I noticed something. My son ate all of his cereal every time, without complaint. I realized that saving the marshmallows for the milk was the process I wanted for him, but not the process he wanted to follow. 

Some might think, “what about Walter Mischel’s famous experiment on the benefits of delayed gratification?” He even used marshmallows!. However, that was an observation of patience under the promise of reward (an extra marshmallow). My son wasn’t working for a reward. He was getting a job done. How he does it should be up to him. 

My four-year-old daughter, on the other hand, just eats the marshmallows and runs off to twirl somewhere.