10 Tips to Help You Become a More Patient Parent

Have more fun with your kids and learn how to be a patient parent starting now. Patience is a habit developed with practice and time. 10 positive parenting tips to help you become a more patient Mom,and learn how to choose connection, love and kindness over frustration & impatience. 

If you’re struggling with staying calm and not yelling, there are some really great resources to help you.  Calm Parenting: Learning to Stop Yelling as helped hundreds of parents already. See what all the fuss is about and how this ecourse retrains the brain for calm, patient responses. The beginner’s guide to stop yelling is the perfect way to dip your toe in to making a change if you aren’t ready to leap into the course. 

Surefire Strategies to Help You Be a More Patient Parent

Many Moms start the day off with a replenished reservoir of patience, but when they near the middle and especially end of the day, we often hear how the well has run dry and their patience is gone.

Sure, there’s no such things as perfect Mom and the same holds true that there’s no such things a Mom with limitless patience, but there are habits you can practice to increase the patience you already have, even in the face of tantrums, sibling fighting, power struggles and defiant behavior.

If you’re a Mom who feels like you’re out of patience by lunchtime when your child is pitching a fit over lunch or refusing to go down for their afternoon nap… or maybe your patience hits empty when the noise level hits high pitches at 5:07pm while you’re trying to pull together dinner.

If this sounds like you and you’re a Mom with limited amounts of patience, then these positive parenting tips will help you respond with more kindness and gentleness the next time your tank hits empty.

Learn the habits to choosing love over impatience, connection over frustration and kindness over anger or irritation.

 

Positive Parenting Tips to Get You Back to Being a Patient Mom

KNOW THAT IT’S NOT YOUR CHILD, IT’S YOU

When you feel your impatience, even anger building up inside, this is the moment you want to take a step back and evaluate the situation. Right now, it’s most important to find the emotional trigger which is making YOU upset because, your child’s actions, are not the problem.

First, distinguish what is upsetting you. Is it the noise, your child not listening to you or refusing to eat the dinner you made? Next, you have to peel back another layer to see what the root trigger is causing your emotions.

Examples:

• You asked your child to clean up his toys and you walk in the room to find he hasn’t. You’re frustrated but not because he didn’t listen, but because you have guests coming over in a few minutes and now you have one more thing to do before they arrive.
• Your daughter is refusing to eat the meal you made for dinner. This is the final straw, but not because you tried so hard to make a meal she’d like and spent a lot of time preparing it, but because you don’t want her to be hungry or go to bed on an empty stomach.
• Your children are jumping and wrestling around in the living room and the noise in your home is very loud. You’ve asked them to stop, but they have not and now you’re beyond irritated, but not because they didn’t listen but when it’s loud you can’t hear yourself think and this really stresses you out.

Children do children things, and unless you want a different outcome, you must be present with them and know your own triggers to get a different outcome.

The more connected you are to your children the more they will respond with respect and when you know what will tip your patience over the line, you can steer your children away from these triggers.

 

LOOK AT THE SITUATION FROM YOUR CHILD’S PERSPECTIVE

Put your little kid glasses on and see the situation from your child’s perspective before you react.

It’s so easy to become impatient with your little one, but when you try to put yourself in their shoes and attempt to see the world through their eyes, you may have a new understanding of why they’re upset, whining, angry, or are acting the way they are.

It’s got to be hard and frustrating to be small, clumsy and have a difficult time expressing themselves when big emotions strike.

It’s easy to forget that children are always communicating with us, in both positive and negative ways. If they’re acting out in a negative way, there’ usually a reason for it and showing you’re interested in understanding and helping them is the connection they need at that moment.

Showing your child you see and hear them is a big part of positive parenting, and makes a big difference in communication when you chose love instead of reacting to them with frustration.

 

TAKE A MOMMY TIME-OUT

Taking a break isn’t just for children who need a little time to cool down and regroup, they’re for parents too. If you want to be more patient with your children, you have to be understanding with them and not multi-tasking so much to brush over their feelings and taking into account your environment.

• If you are too busy, it’s easy to be impatient with your child.
• If you are distracted, it’s easy to miss seeing the situation from their eyes.
• If you are unable to take the time to connect with your child, you won’t be able to understand why they are acting the way they are and how you can help them.
• Patience is about responding with kindness and empathy. It’s about getting down to eye level and respecting their feelings and asking how you can help.When you are busy, distracted, unable to connect or ask your child you can help them, it’s time to take a time-out.

 

SPEND ONE-ON-ONE TIME WITH EACH CHILD

Spending 10 minutes with each of your children every day will help you stay connected to each other and feeds your child’s sense of belonging and significance, which is the primary goal of positive parenting.

Building mutual respect and understanding with each other will help you see your child in a more compassionate and kind way, when frustration wants to creep in.

Additionally, the more you give your children the attention they need, the less they’ll have a need to fight for your attention.

 

CHANGE YOUR VOICE

This is a simple way to change the entire situation, especially when it’s so easy to yell at a time when you’re out of patience.  Take a step back before you yell or react harshly, and talk to your kids instead. It’s easy to forget in the heat of the moment that children need gentleness and more of our patience, not less of it.

A simple way to change your tone is to whisper and talk very softly, or try to talk while smiling. It’s nearly impossible to stay upset when you have a smile on your face.

The way we respond to our children helps them understand how to process their own emotions. The more you practice this, the quicker it will become a habit.

 

WRITE IT DOWN

When you feel impatient with your children, step back and write down how you can chose to react instead of how you want to react.

What do you want most from your children?

A connected relationship built around love, respect, communication and trust?

Think about the ways you can honor this relationship with a gentle response.

Write down ways you can practice patience with your children every day…

• When my children are asking for my attention in negative ways, I will stop what I’m doing and spend 10 minutes with them without distractions. I will give them my undivided attention for 10 minutes.
• I will put my phone away from dinner until bedtime to connect with my kids.

Ask yourself if your patience is shredded at a certain point each day and what you can do to change this part of your day.

 

LIVE IN THE CHILD EGO STATE MORE OFTEN

Positive parenting is about growing a healthy relationship between you and your child. Adults spend about 30% of their time in a Child Ego State and the remaining 70% in Parent and Adult Ego States, whereas children are mainly in the Child Ego State.

The Child Ego State is the joyous, playful side that parents are disconnected from because they operate from a sense of responsibility, whereas children operation from a sense of emotion.

If you want to connect with your child, you must be intentional about living in the Child Ego State more often. This is where the relationship building with your child lives!

Always being in the Parent and Adult Ego State is a good recipe for power struggles and because no one wants to be bossed around, the more we’re in this adult state the more we’ll see our children push back with negative behaviors.

Want to be more patient, then stop ordering, direction, and controlling and begin having more fun connecting with your child.

FIND A CALM DOWN PRACTICE

Removing yourself from the situation before things turn sour is a great option to stopping yourself from reacting out of sheer frustration. Keep a toolbox of calm down tools you like to use to cool off and help you clear your head.

• Splash your face with water
• Diffuse calming essential oils
• Head outside for fresh air and a clear head
• Wash your hands
• Scream into a pillow
• Squeeze a stress ball
• Throw the ball for your dog
• Take a deep breath or 20 outside
• Start baking cupcakes (you get the point…)

Grab Your Printable List of Calm Down Ideas

 

ADJUST YOUR BUSY SCHEDULE

I know personally when I’m most impatient with my children is when I’m working on a deadline or feeling stressed because we have too much going on.

When my family’s scheduled is overloaded, I don’t have time to always cook a homemade meal, exercise, squeeze in me-time, or spend one-on-one time with each of my kids during the day. When we’re running around from things to the next, I turn into a stress monster who is impatient and living by a thread.

When I keep my focus on my children and remaining firm to the princicples of positive parenting, I can see things a lot more clearly.

When I feel myself getting overwhelmed, I know unless I clear some things off my plate and adjust our sails, I will be impatient with my kids and that’s not worth the high price of being busy.

Need a place to keep your daily happenings organized? 

If you prefer to use your phone to keep your family in sync, the Cozi Family Planner is the best FREE app for family organization and synch with all your family members making it easy to track schedules, work obligations, activities and appointments in one digital place.

Sign up to create a free account, upload all your details and download the app to your phone and you’ll see everything synched in one place. Easy, right?

 

LEAN ON THE EXPERTS

When you feel like you need to work on your positive parenting skills, there’s no better place than to lean on an expert. I love reading these books about connecting and positive parenting to help me with my imperfect and impatient Mom struggle.

Best Parenting Books about Positive Parenting

If you’re a visual learner and like to observe others, watch the women around you the next time you’re at school, the playground, a birthday party.

See what they’re doing and how they react and respond to their children. There are always great skills to be learned just by observing other Moms in action!

 

Use these 10 positive parenting tips to help you become a more patient Mom. It’s important to have a healthy relationship with your children, but when you’re impatient and irritable, your connection to them will suffer.

Learning to be more patient means you’re choosing a lasting bond strung together with love, kindness, gentleness and mutual respect.

 

Need a little extra help learning how to get your anger under control? Here’s a FREE Course that will help you turn things around. 

 

 

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