Lifelong Impact of Early Self-Control Childhood self-discipline predicts adult quality of life

W hen we first joined the Dunedin Study team in the 1980s, we had been taught in our psychology Ph.D. training to think in developmental stages: We had learned what is typical of preschoolers, of teenagers, and of older persons. But "typical" failed to describe any of the 1,000 Study participants, who had been physically and psychologically examined since their birth in the early 1970s and were now teenagers. By interviewing tliese young people, we learned to appreciate the remarkable variation among her sweater. A quiet boy recited multiplication tables for fun. The children ranged remarkably in a quality that we have devoted much of our science to understanding:, self-control. The capacity for self-control over our thoughts and actions is a fundamental human faculty. But the inability to make use of that capacity can be our greatest personal failure, especially in today's fast-paced, fast-food world of endless possibility, distraction, and temptation. It's no wonder that every self-help literature shelf is cluttered with promises of greater self-discipline.