The Gay Uncle returned home from Alaska to find that a backlog of magazines had piled up in his absence. Being compulsive, he spent a good portion of the weekend catching up. And lo and behold, he discovered a piece in The New Yorker all about little childrens. It concerns a series of experiments designed to test kids’ ability to control their impulses and delay gratification, and shows that this is an excellent predictor of success later in life. The Gay Uncle obviously knew this already, but it was good to see proof of the benefits of not indulging a kid’s every whim and desire, and helping them to understand the utility of planning, waiting, and reserving resources for future use (and the costs of not doing so) spelled out and proven in a clear (and often humorous) way. In keeping with the G.U. credo–which posits that it’s never too late to make a change–the piece also indicates that just because you have a child with weak impulse control or you’ve been incapable of helping them figure things out by setting clear limits and providing and following through on repercussions thus far that your kid is doomed to a life of poor choices. It actually advocates for overtly instructing kids on these relevant skills and helping them see the positive outcomes. Given his dabbling in understanding the teenage brain–which includes discussions with Harvard Med School faculty Neuroscientists, as well as ongoing contact with many of his preschool students, who are now teens–Gunc can only say that providing neural pathways that foster impulse control now when your child is young will pay major dividends later, when their frontal lobe–the control center for risk management and cost/benefit analysis–needs all the help it can get. Plan ahead, parents!