the buddha and the marshmallow
(Raising Patience—Khanti)
Most of us feel like we need more patience. I’d even bet that patience, as a quality, tops almost any parent’s wish list. If you think you have enough patience, then feel free to skip to the next chapter (on, ahem, honesty). For those of you still reading, here’s some good news: as with all the paramis, patience, like a muscle, comes with practice, and it only develops in situations where you need it. That’s extra-good news for those of us who feel like our children (or spouses or jobs) regularly “try” our patience. The bad news is that we can’t expect our kids to develop patience unless we embody it ourselves.
Patience in Spirituality and Science
Nearly every spiritual tradition has a tale demonstrating the virtues of patience and forbearance. Remember the story I told of the Buddha’s life in chapter 5? After renouncing his life of luxury, Siddhartha lived for years as a wandering ascetic. Yet, despite all his sacrifice and spiritual practice, he still had not found an end to suffering. One day, exhausted and starving, the former prince plopped down beneath fig tree to rest and enjoy a snack that a young girl had offered to share. Realizing that neither his extreme self-sacrifice nor the self-indulgence of his childhood would bring the answers he sought, Siddhartha vowed to sit beneath the tree until he reached enlightenment.
And he did, but not without some torment trying his patience first. Mara—a powerful demon—had noticed that Siddhartha was about to achieve the ultimate spiritual goal, so the demon tempted him with riches, power, and pleasures—or whatever the sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll equivalents of 600 BCE were. Even so, the young man patiently sat through it all—unmoved and undistracted. Once the Buddha finally achieved enlightenment, Mara fled in a rage. This story echoes in the resistance of Job, Jesus, or Muhammad to Satan’s temptations and torments. Patience is also extolled in classic literature and philosophy the world over. There’s a good reason people throughout the ages have placed such a high value on perseverance and forbearance.
Social scientists have paid a lot of attention to patience, too. Walter Mischel, in his famous “marshmallow” study, investigated delayed gratification in young children, using a test for children that was perhaps even more devious than what Satan or Mara could devise.1 Researchers left kids alone in a room with one marshmallow in front of them and gave them a challenge: if the kids could sit in the room for fifteen minutes without eating the marshmallow, they would be rewarded with two marshmallows. The children, unsurprisingly, displayed a range of reactions. A handful immediately grabbed the marshmallow, ate it, and that was that. Others were able to wait a few minutes before caving to the fluffy confectionary temptation. But a third group successfully made it through the longest fifteen minutes of a toddler’s life to savor the hard-earned reward. How were these children able, like that young Siddhartha, to wait for their ultimate reward? Videos from the study show them covering their eyes, turning their chairs away from the marshmallows, and even pulling their hair to distract themselves. Some of the kids reported that they visualized the marshmallow as something less appealing. Others said they kept their minds unwavering on the reward at all times.
Why does it matter whether a four-year-old can resist a marshmallow for fifteen minutes? Mischel and his equally patient research team followed these “successful” kids into adulthood—they scored higher on SATs, had fewer discipline problems, and tended to enjoy more rewarding careers and relationships. According to Mischel, these kids were less likely to be arrested and more likely to have stable relationships, and, not surprisingly, they tended not to be obese.
Mischel and others have continued to study the causes and conditions under which we can and cannot delay gratification. Children from stable backgrounds with secure and trusting attachments are more able to delay, which makes sense. Why patiently wait for a marshmallow if the adult world has broken other promises? What if you have no idea where the next marshmallow will come from? The Buddha, too, felt safe when he sat down. Psychologist Rick Hanson points out that Siddhartha’s back was to the tree, he was protected by the shade, and he just had a bite to eat, so his prefrontal cortex was better able stay on track.2 If we consider the studies that indicate that children with parents who are overly controlling and “authoritarian,” as well as children with negligent parents, struggle to delay gratification more than children with firm but forgiving “authoritative” parents, a middle path looks a lot more inviting.3 Siddhartha’s controlling parents caught a break on that one, or maybe his nanny was the wise adult figure in his life.
Happier, calmer, and wealthier kids are also more able to delay gratification, probably because they feel less desperate for a short-term fix. Stressed-out children struggle in particular. Hearing parents fight in the first year of life (even hearing parents fight while in the womb) can stress a child enough to have a negative impact.4 When our son was only one-and-a-half years old, my wife and I were in a tense discussion about in-laws. We looked over to see Leo frozen with tension. We could also see his natural compassion arise when he ambled over and gave us a hug, reminding us to make peace with each other. Conflict isn’t the end of the world, but remember how important it is for children to see that conflict resolved in a healthy way with order restored.
reflection What makes it more difficult for your children to delay gratification? What triggers signal that you’re about to “lose” your patience?
So what can a five-year-old staring down the temptation of a marshmallow tell us about ancient wisdom? What can ancient wisdom tell us about patience and self-discipline? How can we help our children resist not just the siren song of a marshmallow but all of the world’s countless other temptations—from screens to sex to substances—over the course of a lifetime? Simply put, by recognizing our own “demons,” we can calm the amygdala, activate our prefrontal cortex, and make a proactive strategy, rather than simply reacting to temptation.5 Siddhartha recognized Mara as an illusion and fended off the demon with meditation, visualizations, and maybe even some chanting. The children in the marshmallow study used strategies that weren’t too different—they sang songs, turned away, covered their eyes, tugged on their hair to focus on physical sensation, or kept their mind on the goal of that second marshmallow.
Here’s one important takeaway: secure kids in the study were better able to invent a strategy and follow it through. We can help our children simply by giving them more security. We can also teach them visualization, distraction, and other techniques for keeping their eyes on the prize. To that end, here’s a brief practice to try yourself or with your kids.
PRACTICE The Marshmallow Meditation
As you read the following for the next minute or so, try not to think about a marshmallow (or, if marshmallows aren’t your thing, pick your favorite dessert—a chocolate chip cookie, a red velvet cupcake, a scoop of strawberry ice cream). Do NOT think about that fresh fluffy marshmallow. Do NOT think about how spongy it is, and do NOT imagine the yummy powder that flakes off in your fingers. Do NOT imagine the sweet, slightly vanilla smell and its accompanying associations with summertime bonfires, cozy hot chocolate, or any other happy memories that arise. Do NOT think about the perfectly springy texture as you bite through the dry outside into the moist and sticky inside. Do NOT consider the sensation of the marshmallow bouncing with each bite you chew. And definitely do NOT feel your mouth watering as you raise the marshmallow to your lips and experience the sweet taste and texture as you bite into its soft squishy deliciousness.
Okay, you can stop now. Clear your head (and, if necessary, the corners of your mouth) and take a breath. Let’s try the same exercise again, but this time I want you to read the same paragraph while feeling each in-breath and out-breath. When your mind wanders off into fantasy—say, on the glorious creaminess of the frosting on your unbelievably moist carrot cake—just remember your breath. Read a line or two and feel your in-breath. Read another couple of lines and really notice your out-breath. Okay, ready? Give it another go.
What was different this time around? Did you salivate less? Was the picture of the marshmallow (or other dessert) as sharp as before? How about the urge for a marshmallow? How does breathing in feel differently from breathing out? Practices like this can truly help us get through distractions and temptations, especially when they’re coupled with a set determination to reach a specific goal, whether it be spiritual liberation, an A on the final exam, or just another marshmallow.
Cultivating Patience
Unfortunately, we don’t live in a culture that promotes patience. With instant streaming movies, you no longer have to wait a year to watch the Wizard of Oz, to say nothing of occupying yourself for fifteen minutes after dinner waiting for Mr. Rogers. Microwaves ready dinner in five minutes, and home delivery of anything you could want arrives at the tap of an app. There’s just not much of a need for patience these days, and that’s no accident—if we could delay gratification, we wouldn’t buy so much, or we might make healthier choices. Some might argue that these inventions make the ability to delay gratification obsolete, but consider that patience and delayed gratification correlate with emotional regulation, satisfying relationships, happiness, and lifelong resilience.
reflection What (or who) helped you develop patience in your own childhood?
For decades, the beloved blue Cookie Monster on Sesame Street served as a comic demonstration of Freud’s id, or what we might now think of as prefrontal failure. A few years back, the creators of Sesame Street consulted with Walter Mischel himself to offer Cookie Monster some patience strategies. In one sketch, game show host Guy Smiley offers Cookie Monster a similar choice to the Stanford subjects—one cookie now or two later. A chorus of “Waiting Game Singers” pop up to remind Cookie Monster of various strategies he can use to wait—singing to pass the time, visualizing the cookies inside a picture frame, playing with a toy, imagining the neutral aspects of the cookie like its shape and color, and pretending the cookie is a stinky fish. Mischel describes this process as shifting our brains from “hot” emotional focus to “cool” rational focus, or from amygdala to prefrontal cortex, helping us see the temptation as not real and thus removing the emotional and instinctual charge that makes it easier to delay gratification. One teacher I know uses the video and others like it to teach the marshmallow test to her second graders. The whole class even jokes about “Marshmallow moments”—times when it’s a challenge to wait!
We certainly don’t have to manufacture game shows or hire Guy Smiley to find situations to teach our kids to wait—the opportunities are all around us if we look. It was commonly accepted at my grandmother’s house that you didn’t eat until everyone was seated and my grandmother lifted her fork, and you didn’t leave the table until you asked to be excused. That might seem old-fashioned, but there’s a deep wisdom to manners such as these—it taught my siblings and I how to wait, if even for a minute or two. All we have to do, really, is slow down the instant-gratification train just a little—say a short blessing before meals, reserve brief times of day that are tablet- and smartphone-free, ask the kids to wait to speak while others are conversing, practice saying “not now” (while being sure to tell them when and suggesting an activity while they wait). By the way, asking our kids to “wait a minute” only works if they know how long a minute is, so my friend Bob suggests measuring time in breaths for younger children. Set a timer for one minute and have your child count how many breaths they take. This helps kids learn what “a minute” means and empowers them to feel successful in waiting.
For older children, get them involved in multistep projects. These require planning—which builds executive functioning—as well as communication skills, not to mention patience. Think of projects like ceramics, visual arts, carpentry, or even small home-improvement tasks that require following a series of instructions and plenty of planning ahead. Consider the planning and patience involved in baking and cooking—from the steps in making dough and then waiting for it to rise, then cook, then cool before eating. Gardening, taking care of plants, and looking after pets all build empathy, health, and happiness, not to mention patience and strong executive functions.6 Solving puzzles and learning to play a musical instrument (or learning anything, for that matter) teach patience, determination, and how to tolerate frustration. Letting kids earn and save money also fosters patience, as they have to watch their account grow before they can buy that special something. It also gives them time to think about whether they really want or need it.
Patience can be fun. Think of all those observation games we played between rest stops on road trips as children—finding different license plates, counting cows, alphabet or word games, playing “I Spy,” and more. So many games we don’t bother playing any more like “Simon Says” or “Mother May I” teach valuable lessons like impulse control, waiting, and more. Use your own creativity to make up games together. Stuck in the aptly named waiting room? Invent funny names for everyone else slouched around you. Slow cashier at the grocery store? Make up crazy back-stories for everyone who walks by. Make a game of waiting—see who can walk the slowest, stay quiet the longest, or breathe the deepest breaths. Visualizing and play-acting are wonderful aids in this regard. Lev Vygotsky, a child development researcher, was able to make kids stand still four times as long when he had them imagine they were guards at a factory.7
Steal a page from the play therapy playbook by externalizing emotions—in this case, impatience—and draw pictures of the impatience demon (called Impy) or make puppets and act out plays that involve lots of “if-then” strategies for dealing with impatience. For example, “If Impy shows up while I have to wait for dessert, then I will imagine the cookies are rocks to fool Impy and make him go away!” Help your kids recognize all the times and places that Impy likes to show up (before dinner, in the car, at the post office) and what Impy feels like in their bodies (tingly, jumpy, jittery). Doing so brings their body and breath into the game to help them settle. They can also use their words (“I see you trying to trick me Impy, but I won’t let you!”), which activates their prefrontal cortex, or more logical left brain. And don’t forget to share your own impatience demon who pops up when you feel tired, just arrive home from work, or try to juggle too many things at once. Your Impy and theirs probably have a lot in common.
reflection What strategies or games did you use as a kid for waiting and delaying gratification in line or on long car trips? What could your family come up with together to cultivate patience?
Time in nature is another way to appreciate slowness and learn to wait by checking in with our surroundings. A form of therapy popular in Japan and South Korea called Shinrin-yoku (“forest bathing”) is essentially all about walking around the woods in silence. You might not have a forest nearby, but perhaps you can find a stream or river to watch for a lazy afternoon. Or get your kids to pay attention as “nothing” happens in the sky as clouds roll past. My first meditation practice was my father teaching me to make clouds disappear by focusing on them as I breathed steadily in and out. Later, as a teen, I went on a wilderness retreat that included a few days in the woods by myself. One of the guides gave me a tip that I still remember today: “Just go out and wait until you get bored, then wait some more until you get interested.” As discussed in chapter 3, boredom is important cognitively; we miss out on its benefits when we’re constantly caught up in too many high-tech distractions. Mother Nature is a wonderful antithesis to instant gratification (alongside teaching lessons in patience) as we watch how long she can patiently outwait human interference.
In the hilarious and incisive Bringing Up Bébé, Pamela Druckerman writes about what she calls Le Pause.8 With Le Pause, French parents wait a moment before responding to a child’s nighttime cry, giving the child a chance to learn how to comfort themselves. The length of this wait grows with the child, fostering patience in the child and the parents. I recently witnessed this in action when my friend Scott asked his four-year-old son to wait to look at pictures on his phone. He crouched to his son’s level, connected with him, and explained, “Ezra, the grownups are looking at pictures now, then you can have your turn.” Scott turned back to me and continued to show me the photos. Ezra’s whining didn’t stop entirely, but it subsided as his little brain calmed down and he exercised the waiting muscle. We enjoyed the pictures for a couple of minutes, then Scott rewarded his son with a “thank you,” gave him validation for waiting, and let him view the photos himself.
We can begin by assuming that our children are capable of patience. Among other things, this assumption is far more respectful than believing (and conveying) that our kids just can’t wait. Patience isn’t like a light switch that’s either on or off—we actually have to develop patience through trials over time. What’s more, our patience is inextricably linked to that of our children. If our children grow impatient, often so do we, and vice versa. If we lose our patience and simply hand over whatever our kids want, we are not building anyone’s ability to bear discomfort. The next time you’re stuck in line somewhere, don’t reach for your smartphone for entertainment (for you or your child); instead, try one of the activities suggested earlier or make up one of your own. Together, you and your children can build up those patience muscles.
Mindfulness, Awareness, and Compassion
Practicing mindfulness strengthens the prefrontal cortex and other parts of the brain associated with patience. When we slow down, pause, and reflect between activities, rather than rushing from one thing to the next, we not only give kids a chance to practice slowing down, but we also help them enjoy what they are doing more. Through mindfulness, we learn to be patient and compassionate with ourselves when the mind wanders again and again. Just as mindfulness builds patience, patience also builds mindfulness.
PRACTICE Inviting Impy (or Mara) to Play
Take a few deep breaths and reflect on a time when you lost your patience recently. Where were you? Who were you with? In what ways were you feeling hungry, angry, lonely, or tired? What did the experience feel like in your body, mind, heart, and even your breath? Take a few deep breaths and try to call up the felt experience. What does it feel like now? Take a moment to send yourself some compassion and let the memory clear. After a minute or so of noticing your breath, reflect on a time when you exercised patience. What was that like? How did others respond? When you remember that experience in your body, how does it differ from the memory and associated sensations of impatience? After a few more breaths, let these images and feelings fade away, too.
It takes patience and practice to stay in the moment. Sometimes we are simply too hungry, angry, lonely, tired, or you-name-it to be patient. When these moments arise—and they will—do your best to practice some self-care. Ask for help if you can—all great leaders and spiritual leaders did and do. And just as I advised in the “When” section of chapter 5, do your best to catch things early. Know your own impatience triggers and those of your children, as well as your best skills, abilities, and rituals to fall back on. Validate and reinforce the moments when your kids effectively handle impatience and get curious—find out how they did it to help them build on their successes the next time Impy shows up. And if you or your kids give in to impatience, have some compassion (especially self-compassion).
reflection Take a moment to reflect on a time when you were impressed with how well your children waited patiently. What strategies did they use? How can you help them access these techniques in the future?
You and your kids may never reach the point at which you want to befriend Mara or Impy, but you can extend the delay on gratification, handle boredom better, and become more patient. If this chapter is particularly meaningful to you or if you feel you need a little extra help, try repeating versions of the following short aspirational wishes before you fall asleep or the first thing in the morning. Research finds that when we make affirmations like “I am patient” and we aren’t, we know we are lying to ourselves and feel worse. Try aspirational statements instead.
May I be patient.
May I learn to have patience.
May I learn to teach patience.
May my child be patient.
May my child learn to have patience.
May my child learn to offer patience.
Jean Piaget, the renowned Swiss researcher, often remarked on what he called the “American question.”9 Whenever he lectured in the United States on children’s cognitive development, inevitably some parent would ask, “That’s great, but how can we speed it up?” That is, how can we hasten the process of natural cognitive development? Despite our impatience, there aren’t too many ways to speed up natural processes. You can’t force a flower to bloom early; you can only create the conditions in which the flower might flourish. The same holds true with our kids. So be mindful of any unreasonable expectations you might have for your children and their current level of patience. We can’t expect them to have the reflective and directive functioning of an adult, but we can certainly help them on their way.
At the end of his book on the marshmallow test, Mischel made a wise final point. We don’t teach kids to delay gratification for its own sake. After all, a life without spontaneous marshmallows, or at least some sex and rock-and-roll, is hardly worth living. We teach kids patience so they can choose to use it or not. Freedom lies not in waiting but in having the choice to wait or not. Sometimes one marshmallow is better than two, especially if you can fully enjoy it in the moment.