If your social media feeds are filled with videos of adorable babies stuffing their faces with candy, you have the #FruitSnackChallenge to thank.
The viral trend involves setting out some delicious treats for your kids, asking them to wait and then filming what they do when you leave the room. Are they able to control their impulses?
Last weekend, country singer Thomas Rhett and wife Lauren Akins' 2-year-old daughter, Ada James, gave the challenge a try.
"What is that?" Akins asks as she sits her child down in front of a glass dish full of jelly beans.
"Candy!" Ada responds confidently. Before she can dig in, her mom explains the challenge to her, asking Ada to wait for her to return from the bathroom before trying any.
“You have to be so patient,” Akins says.
“So very patient!” Ada replies.
After Akins leaves, viewers can practically see the wheels turning in Ada’s head — she looks at the dish, giggles, and pushes the the bowl farther away before pulling it back again.
“Very patient,” she says to herself before beginning to tap the tabletop and singing to herself. Finally, Akins returns, and Ada grins as she begins snacking on the candy.
Gabrielle Union’s 18-month-old daughter, Kaavia, recently attempted to resist a bag of chips and failed adorably.
Kylie Jenner’s little girl, Stormi, exercised more restraint. In a clip posted on Jenner’s Facebook page, the 2-year-old is shown talking through her M&M dilemma.
“Patience, patience, patience,” Stormi says as she waits for her mom to return from the bathroom.
In the end, the toddler stayed strong.
Jenner's sister Kim Kardashian, who has four kids under 6, was in awe. "OMG how perfect!" Kardashian commented. "This would NOT be the case w Chi! Or especially Saint."
Former TODAY anchor Katie Couric posted a compilation video of children — including Stormi — grappling with temptation.
“Okay — I don’t know if you guys have been seeing this #fruitsnackchallenge on social — but I discovered it this morning and it absolutely kills me!!!” Couric wrote on Instagram.
Though the Fruit Snack Challenge started popping up on social media in late April, it’s actually nothing new. The trend is based on a 1960s psychological study known as the Marshmallow Test.
Dr. Walter Mischel, who led the experiment, would present children between the ages of 3 and 5 with a treat such as a marshmallow, and then give them two options. They could either eat one treat right away, or wait alone in the room for him until he returned, at which point they could have two treats.
Decades later, Mischel found that the subjects who held out for the bigger prize did better in school, got higher SAT scores and had a lower body mass index (BMI), among other findings. But research published in Psychological Science in 2018 challenged Mischel's results.
“We found virtually no correlation between performance on the marshmallow test and a host of adolescent behavioral outcomes,” researcher Tyler W. Watts told The Guardian. “So, if you looked at our results, you probably would decide that you should not put too much stock in a child’s ability to delay at an early age."