Have patience!

Over the years, I have heard from parents that they need to have more patience with their children. Full disclosure, I accompanied my daughter to the DMV to get her enhanced license (we drove) and by the time we left and she finally dropped me off, I had lost my patience with her. We stopped to get her a drink, lunch, and of course to check out why there was an ambulance up the block. I told her, “I have made a note to myself not to ask you to drop me off somewhere, my peace is worth a subway fare.” Now my daughter us 20 and you would think by now that I have developed patience.  Actually, I have developed a little.

The point is that patience is an important parenting skill. The other important parenting skill is active listening which goes hand in hand with patience. Picture this: a three-year-old melting down in a toy store because they want a doll or robot and the parent said, “no.” Typically this situation plays out with the parent begging the child to stop and even offering a reward if they stop such as getting ice cream or the opposite where they threaten to take away the ice cream stop unless the meltdown ends. It doesn’t have to be these ways!

When my daughter was younger and would melt down, here is what I would do:

1.    Move us out of the way of people/traffic.

2.   Get down at her eye level.

3.    Tell her that I understand her feelings and ask her to use her words.

4.   Then I would repeat back what she said (active listening) to make sure I heard her correctly.

5.    By now she has stopped crying and can have a conversation.

My daughter felt heard and understood which is the purpose of the meltdown. I threw temper tantrums as a kid, so I know all about them. This method may not work for your child. My parents chose to ignore me and that worked for me and not for my daughter (I tried this early on).

The point is that parenting is unique to each child. Even so, there are two important universal skills to have in your parenting toolbox: active listening and patience.

What is active listening?... the answer

How do you develop more patience?... the answer