You Can Always Use More Patience

“Be the parent today that you want your kids to remember tomorrow.” ~Unknown

I always knew that being a parent required patience. So I was intentional in working on that throughout my pregnancy. I also relied on my partner who I always felt had the most patience in the world! But then my son started walking and talking and all the patience I thought I had, went right out of the window. I will say now that I am knee deep in; parenting requires an insurmountable amount of patience.

Now with that said, some days I have the patience of Job and other days I will lose it over a cup spill. But if I am being honest my patience has less to do with my son and more to do with timing. Timing is what it all comes down to. If it isn’t the right time for me, or I am not prepared at the exact moment to deal with whatever comes my way, my short fuse will come out. For example if you have a bad day at work and your patience is worn thin by your boss, what is left for your curious toddler? 

How do you hold enough patience for your little one when the world and other people utilize so much of it before that day is out? 

Someone told me to pause and take a breath before reacting to anyone or anything including my child. That was good advice but realistically because I am human not 100% full proof. The real lesson I learned and continue to learn is when I do lose my patience because it will happen, how I choose to recover from that. 

When losing my patience, I would feel so bad and disappointed in myself. I would feel inadequate that I didn’t live up to this standard I created in my head that I was never allowed to lose my patience as a mom. Now having honest conversations with moms more frequently they laugh that I had that thought. Now the advice I am given is allow yourself space to mess up, lose your patience, yell!  We are all human. This one moment does not make up the entirety of you as a mother.

So I yelled at my toddler, I lost my patience when they were not listening. What now?

So the conversation happens. While it is important for your children to understand their own emotions I am learning it is equally important to understand yours or at least your intentions. So now in the times where my son isn’t listening, having temper tantrums and I lose it. I come back with an explanation and love. Of course the love is not an effort to dismiss the bad behavior but instead for him to understand that even when he isn’t listening and mommy gets upset, that never diminishes my love for him. We talk about doing better and we move forward to try again. For me it is important that my child never doubts my love for him, but equally important for him even in his tantrums to be able to communicate his feelings afterwards. Even at two I understand the dialogue starts now. I want him to become a man that even in his anger or frustration, can communicate. Teaching comes from showing. Even when I have my adult tantrums( loss of patience) I have to show him the other side of it. I can’t say I have it all figured out and every child is different, what works for one won’t work for the other. But what I have learned is to give myself some grace with what I like to call my adult tantrums and to communicate my feelings to my son just as I want him to communicate with me.

“Patience is the art of concealing your impatience.” ~Guy Kawasak