How to Have Patience with My Child as a Parent
Having patience with your child can be a major challenge for a parent, particularly when dealing with children who don't seem to have any for you. Temper tantrums, fights, crying -- all of these can push a parent to the brink and make finding patience seemingly impossible. When you feel impatient with your child, take some time to breathe, reflect and do some self-care to recenter yourself and help get some control over the situation.
Instructions
Take a deep breath and count to 10. In the moment when you feel like you're losing patience, stop and make yourself take 10 seconds to recenter and focus on something other than the stress of the situation. Think about the last time you ate or drank something, or whether you got a good night's sleep. Often the constant demands of parenting leave little time for self-care, and letting yourself get dehydrated, hungry or overtired will only shorten your fuse. Make sure you eat three meals a day and get eight hours of sleep at night. These basic habits will go a long way toward helping you keep your cool during tense moments. Pretend someone's watching. An effective way to control your impulses and actions in a stressful moment is to pretend you have an audience watching what you do. Seeing your actions from an outside perspective can help you control them. Have a tally system. Every time you feel yourself losing patience with your child, mark down a tally on a slip of paper. At the end of the day, think back over the times you lost patience and plan ways to deal with those situations better in the future. Give yourself a "time out." Often, parents neglect personal time because of the demands of their children. Make yourself take at least 10 minutes out of your day just for you to get quiet and calm. Confide in someone you trust about your lack of patience and ask for her advice. Often, other parents have gone through the same thing and can give suggestions for dealing with it. Simply telling your problems to someone with a sympathetic ear can help you pinpoint the issue and figure out a way to solve it. Keep a journal that chronicles the stresses and moments of lost patience you experience every day. You can use the tally system to help yourself keep track of the daily struggles with patience, and then write about them more in-depth at the end of the day when you can take a moment for yourself and reflect. Remind yourself that you're not a bad parent for losing patience and certainly not the first person to face the challenges of raising children. If you have difficulty keeping this in mind, consider writing down an affirmation for yourself, such as "I am a good person dealing with a difficult situation" and posting it in a prominent place where you can see it at tough moments.
