What if the problem isn’t self-control?

I’ve always loved the marshmallow test.

You probably remember it. A young child sits alone in a room with a marshmallow and hears a simple challenge: wait a few minutes without eating it, and you’ll receive a second marshmallow.

The experiment was remarkably simple.

Beginning in the late 1960s, psychologist Walter Mischel designed the study to better understand delay of gratification: what makes waiting difficult, and what helps children manage that challenge. Few people could have predicted that this small experiment would become one of the most influential studies in psychology.

Years later, Mischel and his colleagues followed many of those children into adolescence and adulthood. On average, the children who waited longer earned higher SAT scores, performed better academically, coped more effectively with stress and frustration, and demonstrated stronger social and cognitive skills. Those findings captured the imagination of parents, educators, and researchers alike. The marshmallow became much more than a marshmallow. It became one of psychology’s most enduring symbols of self-control.

Like many parents, I couldn’t resist trying my own version at home with my daughter. I explained the rules, placed the marshmallow on the table, and told her that if she waited, she’d get two instead of one.

She looked at me. She looked at the marshmallow. Then she picked it up…

…and ate it. Immediately. I remember laughing and thinking, Well… according to this study, that probably isn’t a good sign.

Why the Marshmallow Test Still Matters

Years later, I found myself thinking about the marshmallow again while reading Stuart Shanker’s revised edition of Reframed: A Self-Reg Revolution. Stuart doesn’t dismiss Mischel’s work, nor does he argue that the study was wrong. Instead, he reframes the question.

Waiting isn’t simply a test of self-control. Waiting is a stressor. That idea becomes obvious once you see it, yet I had never thought about it that way before.

The moment we recognize waiting as a stressor, everything changes. We stop asking whether a child made the “right” choice. We begin asking what waiting required of that child’s brain and body.

What Changes When We See Waiting as a Stressor?

Every stressor places demands on the brain and body. Waiting requires us to manage anticipation, uncertainty, frustration, competing impulses, and the effort of holding back an immediate response. Those demands require energy expenditure. Whether a child can manage them depends not simply on determination, but on their brain-body state in that moment.

Now I’m no longer wondering why one child waited and another didn’t. I’m wondering what was happening inside each child’s brain and body while they waited. If eating the marshmallow reflects stress-behaviour rather than simply a lack of willpower, then the question isn’t, How do we build more self-control? It’s, How do we reduce the stress load so waiting becomes possible?

Researchers have also revisited the marshmallow test over the past decade. As they looked more closely at the original findings, they discovered that children’s environments and life circumstances played a much larger role than the original interpretation suggested. In many ways, those findings move the conversation closer to Self-Reg. We cannot understand children’s behaviour apart from the demands placed on their nervous systems and the resources they have available to manage those demands.

We need to solve the right problem.

If we believe the problem is self-control, we’ll naturally spend our energy trying to strengthen self-control. But if waiting itself is a stressor, our attention shifts. We begin by asking what is increasing the load on the child’s nervous system and what might help reduce it.

To me, that’s the brilliance of Stuart’s reframing. He reminds us that behaviour makes far more sense when we begin by asking, Why is this so hard? rather than assuming a child simply needs to try harder.

It feels like a small shift in perspective, but it changes the questions we ask, the way we respond, and ultimately how we understand children.

A Question to Mull Over

Can you think of a time when what looked like a lack of self-control, in yourself or someone else, might actually have been a stress response?

How might your response have changed if you had started by asking, What was this situation asking of their brain and body?

Continue Exploring

If this idea resonated with you, here are a few places to continue your learning:

• Read: Reframed: A Self-Reg Revolution by Stuart Shanker explores this and many other familiar ideas through a Self-Reg lens.
• Learn with us: Foundations in Self-Reg: An Introduction to Self-Reg begins by exploring the difference between self-regulation and self-control, then takes you deeper into the science of stress and behaviour through Stuart Shanker’s Self-Reg framework.
• Go further: Our Self-Reg 101 Shanker Method self-directed course provides a practical introduction to recognizing stressors, reframing behaviour, and reducing stress to support regulation.

References

Mischel, W., Ebbesen, E. B., & Zeiss, A. R. (1972). Cognitive and attentional mechanisms in delay of gratification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 21(2), 204-218.

Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., & Rodriguez, M. I. (1989). Delay of gratification in children. Science, 244(4907), 933-938.

Shanker, S. (2025). Reframed: A Self-Reg Revolution (Revised ed.). University of Toronto Press.

Watts, T. W., Duncan, G. J., & Quan, H. (2018). Revisiting the Marshmallow Test: A Conceptual Replication Investigating Links Between Early Delay of Gratification and Later Outcomes. Psychological Science, 29(7), 1159-1177.