To have success in life: Don’t eat that marshmallow!

The secret of self-control

In the late 60’s , psychologist Walter Mischel started a classic experiment. He would invite 4 years old in a room called ‘the game room’ at the Big Nursery School on Stanford University campus. The room was relatively small with a table and a chair. On the table you could see a tray full of sweet treats. The researcher made an offer to each participating child: you can eat a marshmallow right now, or you can wait a few minutes, while I will step out of the room, and when I will come back you can eat two.

Watching the experiment you see all kinds of reactions, while the children try to keep self control. Some of them gave in after just a few minutes and others, while kicking and hiding their eyes, managed to wait for 15 minutes until the scientist returned.

Analysing the results, Mischel discovered that children that were low delayer had problems in school and at home. They got low scores at SAT tests, they had problems maintaining friendships, struggle in stressful situations and to pay attention. On the other hand, higher delayer have better results in life. For example, Carolyn Weiss (one of the children participating in the experiment), attended the undergraduate programme at Stanford University and got a PhD diploma.

For decades, scientists argued that raw intelligence is the secret of success in life. But Mischel’s experiment tell us that self control is essential and that raw intelligence is at the mercy of self-control as even the most intelligent children have to do their homework.

“What we’re really measuring with the marshmallows isn’t will power or self-control,” Mischel says. “It’s much more important than that. This task forces kids to find a way to make the situation work for them. They want the second marshmallow, but how can they get it? We can’t control the world, but we can control how we think about it.”

So Mischel’s experiment and everyday life shows us that kids who delayed gratification is correlated with socioeconomic status and parenting styles. Children who have self-control skills, can attend boring classes in order to get a degree and avoid drugs and alcohol. On the other hand, children that don’t have them, most likely will be a drop out and have a lifetime of foolish decisions such as teen pregnancy, gambling, drug use and crime.

Some scientist argue that, children coming from poor families exercise less self control skills as their life has been disrupted by violence , marital breakdown, etc and have the tendency to think short term rather than long term.

So, making sure that by creating a stable and predictable environment for kids in which good behaviour is paying off, will work in improving our children’s self control skills and give them a good start to have a successful life.

Is there an IQ limit for being a mother?

by Andreea Lofgren

Yesterday, I read this story in Times Online about a woman who is denied the right to keep her three year old daughter for reasons of being ‘ not cleaver enough’ to be a mother. The court has informed the mother that her baby will be placed with an adoptive family within three months.

According to the news, the baby was born prematurely and the authorities felt that the mother , named Rachel, lacks the knowledge to take care of the baby’s medical conditions.

The Times reports that Rachel feels: “I have been totally let down by the system. All I want is to care for my daughter but the council and the court are determined not to let me.

“The court here has now ordered that my contact with my daughter must be reduced from every fortnight until in three months’ time it will all be over and I will never see her again.”

This situation forced Rachel to take her appeal to the European Court of Human Rights, that can help her keep the child.

This story raises serious questions whether if there is an intelligence limit that women need to have in order to become mothers. Even more, how do you define this intelligence and how do you measure it?

The way this woman was treated by the justice system is appalling and the authorities in their crusade to secure an adoption family for the child, forgot instead to take measures to preserve the natural one.

I wonder, if this woman is consider not clever enough to raise her child, who sais that another woman is smart enough to do it?

Mummy do you want an earth digger? I’ll buy you one!

Toddler almost throw his parents into ruin when she bought an earth digger online.

I think this story is as hilarious as it is disturbing: a New Zeeland couple, almost found themselves ruined by their three year old daughter, named Pipi, when she bought a digger on an internet auction.

Pipi’s mother, left the computer logged on after she was looking for toys online on an auction site . While she was asleep, Pipi tried her internet skills with the automatic log-in that her mom was using to access the auction website.

They found out the truth after receiving an e-mail requesting a payment of NZ$20,000 (£8,000) from the seller. The toddler’s family is lucky, as the seller doesn’t insist on the sale.

With this in mind, Sarah is urging other children’s parents to watch out for these kind of situations. "I've taken all my automatic log-ins off anything she could purchase from," she said.

How ethical is to be an elderly mother?

A 66 years old business woman will become the oldest UK mother

by Andreea Lofgren

Today, in Sunday Times, I stumbled upon this piece of news: Elizabeth Munro, an UK business woman will give birth next month to her first baby and in early July she will celebrate her 67 anniversary. These two cornerstones will make her the oldest UK mother to give birth to a child. The news reignited the medical and ethical debate whether is good for elderly women to give birth.

Professor Severino Antinori, who is the IVF pioneer, said that Munro bided for motherhood a bit too late. In his opinion, the maximum age to have a child will be 63, because the average life expectancy is 83 and the average time when a child needs parents is between 18 to 20 years. This declaration fuelled a lot of debate around this pregnancy, and how ethical is.

Having treated more than 3000 women between 49 and 63 with IVF, Mr. Antinori declared he was shocked by the idea of Mrs. Munro giving birth of 67 years old and that she is taking a lot of risk, because any birth after 63 will not guarantee a loving mother for the baby.

Munro is described by her friends as very determent and private person, who doesn’t show her age. She was briefly married for 6 months to a business man and became step mother to his three grown up children. She has no siblings, and even to her friends this pregnancy came as a big surprise.

According to one of her friends declaration, she always wanted to have children, but they cannot understand why she waited for so long to make this step.

Margaret Murchie, former colleague at Delmore, the Suffolk business producing plastic products of which Munro is managing director, said ‘She is very dedicated to her work but she will make a good mother, I think.’’

Jane Page, the company secretary at Delmore, said: “Liz is a very focused and determined woman who would have considered things very carefully before she took a step like this. I was a bit surprised when she told me she was expecting a baby, but she knows what she is doing and, knowing her, would have made all the arrangements – I hear she has already hired a nanny.’’

Having build a strong business over the years, colleagues are expecting her to get back to work very soon, even with the new baby. A few years back she declared to one of her friends that if she would find somebody to run it, she might step down.

The questions here are: was she selfish for having a child of her own at this age? Why hasn’t she adopted years ago? Would it be fair for this baby to become orphan at 20 years old?

It’s hard to be in her shoes, but even if she feels strong and able to carry both a demanding career and a newborn at an age where the majority of people is playing golf and enjoying cruise vacations, there are great implication for an innocent person that is about to step out into this world.

Top iPhone Apps for New Mothers

by Andreea Lofgren

1. Photos

Trying to take a picture of your child can be very challenging. With Baby Cam's all sorts of noises including doorbells, drums and even songs you really have a great assistant to take your kid the perfect pick!

2. Nursing

Nursing tracker is the perfect organizer for early days of nursing. By using a tap record you can make notes of when was your baby last nursed, for how long and which side.

3. Health & Fitness

As I said to you before, breastfeeding for a month after giving birth won't get your old shape back. So Download to lose it! This application keeps track of your daily intake of calories and how much you burn through your exercise. For great work out try the iFitness application.

4. Music

For nap time, the aSleep application brings you 15 lullabies and has a timer as well. If your child is over stimulated, you can choose the White Noise setting, and you will hear an ambient noise like a fan, for example. Select the volume and set the timer.

5. Cooking

Ditch the cooking book with this application! With it you will always know all the ingredients for your recipe while you are grocery shopping. Having over 170,000 recipes from 100,000 users from around the world, you will have no headackes preparing the dinner for your fammily!The recipes are sorted by top-rated, read buying tips, and save recipes to try soon and if you want to try something new, press the refresh button or shake your device and you will get a random recipe from the BigOven archive. And if all those options sound overwhelming, try 4 Ingredients and choose from over 400 recipes that consist of... just four simple ingredients. Great!

6. Games

This one si perfect to keep quiet your toddlers while you are travelling for long car trips. With games like Scribble, your kids can draw right on the screen with their fingers. Shake it to erase it and start all over again! Another game is BugSquash , where they can squash bugs racing along the screen, by taping the touch button.

7. Education

By flipping through all kinds of pictures of food, animals, shapes and colour, it can teach your child the difference between a dog and a zebra, or the difference between blue and green. The application comes with multiple language translation so while your kid can see how dog looks like, you can say ''le chien'' in French.

BABY SLEEP

by Andreea Lofgren

Sleeping is one of the priorities of new parents. How much should the baby sleep? How often are they wakening up during night?

In my opinion the key night time sleep is the daytime sleep and absolutely vital for both, is the darkness. To teach your baby the difference between the time asleep and time awake is to make sure from his early days that he is put to sleep in a dark room for all his naps. The substance that stimulates sleep is called melatonin and is produced by the pineal gland. This hormone is stimulated by darkness and prepares the body for sleep.

After 45 minutes, all babies come into a light sleep, so even the smallest amount of light can affect their sleep.

Here are the most common reasons why babies don’t sleep:

- hunger

- not feeding enough (in early days a baby may need 25 minutes at each breast for a normal feed)

- sleeping too much during day

- not sleeping enough during day that will make them overtired

- overstimulation – they need downtime before sleep

- waking themselves up (babies up to six week have a strong Moro reflex, so you should tuck them in firmly when putting them to sleep)

- getting cold

- wrong sleep associations

- outside disturbance