Parenting and Patience

Over the last couple of weeks the topic of patience has come up with a few parents I’ve been working with.  They say they’re losing their patience easily with their kids and with other people.  In response, I’ve put out the question: “How much of this do you think has to do with expectations?”  They all say it probably has a lot to do with expectations.  When we expect certain things of ourselves and we don’t come through, we become impatient.  When we have expectations that our kids will behave a certain way or do things in a certain way, we become impatient.

If you’re a person who consistently gets impatient with yourself and with other people, it can be because of any number of things but I think examining our expectations is a place to start.  So far example, say you start your day by writing a list of things you want to accomplish that day and you only end up doing two things.  Some people become disappointed with themselves and focus on the fact that they only got two things done out of the ten things they intended on doing.  Or you might be a person who expects a lot of of yourself in terms of performance.  You expect to perform at an “A” level and anything less is unsatisfactory.  You become very impatient with yourself.  “I only got two things done today!!” 

When we have high expectations of ourselves, we tend to have high expectations of our kids.  We expect when we ask them to do something, they’ll do it in a timely fashion and you’ll be able to go from A to B with no unexpected interruptions.  With parenting we can always expect the unexpected.  Things come up and our kids will not cooperate and plans go out the window.  For some people all of this leads to a loss of patience.  You had an expectation that things would be exectuted a certain way and such and such would be accomplished but it didn’t happen.  Who set up the expectation in the first place? 

How do we become more patient?  Like everything else, it’s a process but it starts with us.  If we learn to let go of some of our expectations and just accept what is, we are less reactive.  Some things in life demand we perform at 100% but not everything.  We can ask ourselves:  “If I don’t accomplish what I wanted, or perform at the level I expected of myself, what’s the worst that will happen?”  The truth is, when we start to accept and embrace what is, our relationships improve and that starts with the relationship we have with ourselves.

If you intended on taking your child to the park and he becomes absorbed in a construction project and doesn’t want to leave it, that’s OK.  You can decide to relish in his enjoyment of what he’s doing right now.  If you had an expectation that dinner would be on the table by 5:30 but a child needed you with her in the bathroom for 20 minutes or something got spilled all over the the floor, just go with the flow.  Dinner will be when you can get to it.  Life can become much less stressful when we release our expectations.