Want To Teach Your Kids Self-Control? Ask A Cameroonian Farmer (www.npr.org)

Christine Cissy White 7/24/1711:57 AM

I saw this article linked on the Vital Village Facebook page today. It's fascinating.

Now for the first time, there's a study reporting on what happens when psychologists give the marshmallow test to kids outside Western culture, specifically 4-year-old children from the ethnic group Nso in Cameroon.
"The Nso are a community who live off subsistence farming, mainly corn and beans," says Bettina Lamm, a psychologist at the Universitaet Osnabrueck, who led the study. "Most of the children live in mud brick houses without water and electricity. They have to work a lot to take care of younger siblings and help their parents on the farm."
Guess what? These kids rocked the marshmallow test.
"The difference was huge," Lamm says. "The Cameroonian kids really behave very differently, and they were able to wait much better."

Full article.

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