This past weekend's New York Times magazine is a school-centric issue with one article in particular that caught my eye: teaching self-control to young kids . This report reminded me of the famous Stanford marshmallow study . The NYT magazine article says:
There is a popular belief that executive-function skills are fixed early on, a function of genes and parenting, and that other than medication, there's not much that teachers and professionals can do to affect children's impulsive behavior. In fact, though, there is growing evidence that the opposite is true, that executive-function skills are relatively malleable ???????? quite possibly more malleable than I.Q., which is notoriously hard to increase over a sustained period. In laboratory studies, research psychologists have found that with executive function, practice helps; when children or adults repeatedly perform basic exercises in cognitive self-regulation, they get better at it.