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If you think IQ is the most important predictor of success in school, think again. According to researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, what matters more is the ability to delay gratification.

As soon as she gets home from school, 10-year-old Kailey hits the books.

“Sometimes I work ‘till dinner on my homework,” she says.

She gets A’s and B’s, all hard-earned.

“It’s hard sometimes, when she sees other kids that it does come easy for them, and they don’t seem to do a whole lot to get an ‘A’,” says her mother, Robin Williams.

But is intelligence as important as self-discipline?

In a simple experiment, the researchers gave 300 eighth graders a choice: they could have a dollar now, or get two if they waited a week.

A year later, it was the children with the discipline to wait who got the best grades in school… even better than the students with the highest IQ.

“A child who does not have to work hard in school won’t learn how to manage their time, how to study, how to delay gratification,” says Bonnie Cohen-Greenberg, an M.Ed. in Special Education. “Everything comes easy to them, and later on in life they will have problems.”

Parents, Cohen-Greenberg says, need to teach their kids to wait – watch TV, go to the mall, hang out with friend, but only after your homework is done.

And she says that, too often, parents will applaud intelligence over self-discipline.

“And in fact,” she says, “they’ll even brag ‘my child doesn’t have to work very hard and they’re getting great grades, isn’t that wonderful’.”

Cohen-Greenberg says parents should encourage their child to seek out challenges, such as classes or activities that don’t come easily at first, and praise the effort.

For Kailey, math – her most difficult subject – is one of her favorites.

“I like the challenging [subjects] the best,” she says. “You learn more.”

What We Need To Know

• Parents should show by example. When you come home from work and immediately turn on the TV, your child will get the idea that that’s OK for them too. (Bonnie Cohen-Greenberg, M.Ed.)




• Teaching children self-discipline means first they must have self-respect – which comes from feeling loved and appreciated.
  (Unicef)
• 
  Children often do not have the cognitive capacity to delay gratification before the age of 7. Parents should keep their expectations realistic. (Susan R. Johnson, M.D.)

Resources

• University of Pennsylvania Psychology Department




• University of Illinois Study: Children’s ability to delay gratification: longitudinal relations to mother-child attachment.




• Columbia University Study: Delay of gratification in children.

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