Learning Patience

When we were first married, our neighbor was a new mom.  I remember hearing her lose her cool one day and I was horrified.  How could this intelligent, amazing mom yell at her child like that? 

Then I became a mom.  My children were good, but they did a lot of screaming  My husband worked two jobs and there were weeks that I had no adult conversation.  I found myself yelling back at the kids when they screamed.  It felt like I was yelling all the time!  My patience was almost non-existent before children, but I didn’t even know this person I was becoming.  I didn’t like her very much.

One day I read a parenting book that asked what I want my children to remember about their childhood.  Do I really want them to remember that mom yelled all the time?   I would definitely not like to be remembered that way.  So, I had to come up with a plan.

The next time they started screaming, I whispered to them.  I found that the more softly I spoke, the more they listened to me.  The screaming (both from them and from me) had all but vanished.  It was glorious!  I felt like an amazing mom! 

Now I’m not going to tell you that I never yelled again, but it did slow down.  I’m not going to tell you that I became the most patient person on the Earth, but I got a little better at giving them the opportunity to try things their way.

What I discovered is that patience is a learned behavior.  Making a conscious effort to allow other people to do their own thing at their own pace is so much harder than you would think.  I have learned that if you give them the opportunity to work within their own reasonable timeframe, it gets done.  You are not screaming.   Your blood pressure doesn’t go up.  And by giving them the chance to complete the task, that’s one less thing you have to do yourself – bonus!