This morning was monumental, much better than A’s on a report card or 99th percentiles on standardized tests. This morning my eight-year-old boy got up and said that he wanted to finish all his work first thing in the morning. Walter Mischel, make way for Charlie Douglas who just passed the marshmallow test on a grand scale.
While I’m off for a few weeks during the summer, my two boys enjoy the pleasures of Papa Camp, which shares a few of the same attributes of their traditional “sleep-away camps,” like regular meal service, swimming at the lake, and poopy-sleepy time. However, unlike most “sleep-away camps,” Papa Camp has some work involved. (I refer to work here in the purest Mark Twain sense as being something that you have to do rather than something that you choose to do.) The work involved is daily reading, writing, math, exercise, piano and chores. This summer, rather than working out an intricate schedule of these activities for the boys, I gave them a spreadsheet with the activities listed and told them that they needed to do all of them each day. They also have a limit on screen time each day, and they must keep track of this as well. I have refrained from nagging, and let them figure out the how and when of getting the work done, when to play MInecraft (more tempting than a marshmallow for my boys), and when to loll around trying to deal with summer boredom.
This morning, one of the first things out of Charlie’s mouth was, “I’m going to do all my work first thing this morning.” When I asked him why, he said that he wanted to get it done first thing because he didn’t do all his work yesterday. When I prodded a little deeper and asked him how it made him feel not to finish his work, he said that he didn’t have the “word” to describe it. I really could care less about the word that he might have chosen; maybe he will be able to name it later, but what is important is that he displayed a huge amount of self control, a large amount of grit that I have not seen exhibited before in his work. The motivation to get his work done first came totally from inside, which is more important to me than almost anything.
Charlie has always had the ability to persevere to do things that he wants to do -- to play. He can and does spend hours designing and making intricate Lego structures. He figured out, by himself, over many, many hours how to use I Movie to make a video about his Dream Team of Lego heroes. However, up to this point in time, he has not displayed the same stick-to-it quality in things that other people, like his parents and teachers, require him to do. It is amazing to me to see this transference of grit from the things that he wants to do to the things that he is asked to do, and I wonder how and why this blossomed within him.
I know that this quality, possibly more than anything else, will help Charlie to be successful and happy. The self-control to postpone gratification, in eight-year-old Charlie’s case, the power to choose to do his work before designing worlds in Minecraft, will reduce negative stress in his life and give him control over his world.
