The need for immediate gratification affects tendencies of violence toward others and themselves.
By TRACEY SHIPLEYYoga(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
This has been a difficult time in Jerusalem. Two recent suicides of young adults and the murder of a 16-year-old boy by a friend. Parents often blame themselves for choices their children make. Such is often the case in suicide. We see our kids struggling with depression, take them to countless professionals, try to open our lines of communication with them, but often nothing seems to work.Those who have read the book His Bright Light: The Story of Nick Traina have learned about Danielle Steel’s son who struggled with depression. A talented musician, at the age of 19 he took his own life. His mother gave him all of her focused attention from the day he was born. She went to every length to try to bring him joy, support his endeavors and protect him. She even hired a 24-hour bodyguard to keep him safe from himself.While alone in a room at the home of a family, he overdosed on morphine.Youth today experience so many challenges: teens and young adults struggling with interpersonal relationships; challenges with peer pressures encouraging them to go in dangerous directions; young girls unwilling to break up with abusive boyfriends for fear of losing their love. The list goes on. Knowing how to help our kids while allowing them to fight their own battles and win their own wars can be quite confusing and daunting. One tool that can positively affect our kids is helping them to delay immediate gratification and immediate reactions. As we know, sometimes one impulsive act can be their last.Speaking to Menahem Gottesman, founder of Meled, the first high school in Jerusalem to deal with the kids no other school would take, he referred to a student who had come to his school after the boy’s former principal had said, “Menahem, don’t touch this kid. He’s a bad apple unable to change.” This was a boy with a history of violence with no impulse control, lashing out at anyone he encountered. Despite the other teachers’ pleas to expel him, Gottesman wouldn’t hear of it. “There is something there,” Gottesman would tell them. “I know we can save this kid.”Gottesman knew that the angrier a kid was, the more pain he was feeling inside.All he needed to do was to take the time to reach the place that took over and caused the boy to lash out. He couldn’t teach his students to delay their gratification if he was quick to make a judgment and give up on a kid. He met them where they were and found a way to let them know that he accepted them for who they were and showed them that they could trust him. With herculean efforts in patience and reinforcing positive behaviors, Gottesman saw this student go off to college, recently get married and go on speaking tours about how to turn your life around and express your emotions in a positive way.Lily Halperin is one of Israel’s top experts on violence prevention. In discussing the subject of immediate gratification and its effect on adolescents’ relationships toward others and themselves, she cites the Stanford University marshmallow experiment, in which a group of four-year-olds were asked to wait 20 minutes before eating a marshmallow in order to get an additional one. It was amazing to see who managed to postpone their gratification and how those few achieved it. One girl actually turned her chair around to avoid being tempted. This was a four-year-old who already had an understanding of her limitations. Years later, the same children were studied to see if this experiment indicated how their tendencies affected their success in life. Not surprisingly, the kids who had postponed their gratification lived more successful lives than the ones who didn’t.They had higher SAT scores, lower levels of substance abuse, lower likelihood of obesity, better responses to stress, better social skills as reported by their parents, and generally better scores in a range of other life measures.Halperin explains how the need for immediate gratification affects tendencies of violence toward others and themselves. Research has shown that the need for immediate gratification isn’t necessarily an innate trait. It can be learned by an environment that breeds lack of trust. When things are promised but are delayed and actually are never fulfilled, children learn that it is beneficial to take what is available when it’s available.What can we do to help our teens learn the skills needed to delay gratification? In essence, we are teaching them how to think so they can outsmart their desires.Basic tools that can be truly life-changing can be as simple as learning how to quiet the mind through meditation, exercising through activities such as yoga, walking or sports, having creative outlets such as music, art, dance, writing, and keeping their rooms and workspaces organized. All these tools and activities take patience to accomplish and succeed in. Insisting that our kids take care of their responsibilities before they indulge in entertainment of any sort is a way of training them for success.The entire concept of prioritizing is paramount for success. In particular, youths with ADD have a serious issue deciding what to do first when everything seems to have the same importance.Here is where the term “first things first” becomes so important.The Growing Room Education Council has a well-written website with great tips on postponing gratification.It speaks about the disservice we do when we give our kids unwarranted reinforcement, which affects their capacity to handle situations they will face as adults. It cites recent studies which reveal that this new “entitled generation” displays high rates of mental health problems, loneliness, isolation and failure in their early marriages. It suggests some key ways to help kids develop healthier behaviors, such as encouraging them to practice planning, develop an inner voice that encourages them to control their impulses and, of course, advocating that parents be good role models.The writer is an addiction counselor who counsels teens, young adults and parents and is the founder of the Sobar alcohol-free live music center project for teens and young adults. jerusalemcounseling@gmail.com; www.jerusalemteencounseling.net
Related Tagsemotional stress
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