Children by their nature are self-obsessed and they throw tantrums went things don’t go their way. There are three key principles children must attain to be deemed as a civilized pre-teen.
1. Ability to control and maintain attention:Â Children can spend hours playing or doing things that interest them. But by the age of 6-7, they start socializing with others and therefore are expected to focus on things that might not seem interesting to them.
2. Self-regulation:Â This is the most important keystone that many individuals do not learn. Self-regulation is the capacity for physical control. A child/adult needs to learn delayed gratification. (Delayed gratification refers to the ability to put off mildly fun or pleasurable now, in order to gain something that is more fun, pleasurable, or rewarding later.)
The Stanford marshmallow experiment was a study on delayed gratification in 1972 led by psychologist Walter Mischel, a professor at Stanford University.In this study, a child was offered a choice between one small but immediate reward, or two small rewards if they waited for a period of time. During this time, the researcher left the room for about 15 minutes and then returned. The reward was either a marshmallow or pretzel stick, depending on the child’s preference. In follow-up studies, the researchers found that children who were able to wait longer for the preferred rewards tended to have better life outcomes. They led to more successful and happy lives than those that had been impulsive.
3. The ability to empathize with others point of view:Â Balancing our needs against everyone else’s.
Normal children go through these stages effortlessly but nowadays children are skipping these stages. They cannot wait for the marshmallow, they are impulsive and needy. They do not want to understand others point of view. And do not know to want to entertain what does not interest them.
