How To Cultivate Patience In Children

Patience like many good habits is learned, and your child will cultivate it thanks to your example. To teach it, it is necessary to understand that at a young age it is difficult to understand certain abstract concepts such as time.

Very young children always live in the present, they do not know very well to distinguish between what is today, what is tomorrow or half an hour, they can only understand what happens here and now, nothing more. 

That is why many times it is very difficult for them to wait, because for them that waiting time means that what they want will never happen; therefore that phrase “wait a moment, please” for them is insufficient. And that lack of understanding or that impatience, leads them to throw tantrums or demand so many times and so often what they want that they easily destroy the patience of mom or dad.

When this happens, paradoxically, those who must arm themselves with a lot of patience are mom and dad. You must understand very well that children learn at their own pace and that sometimes it is normal for them to be impatient; It is precisely in those moments when it is easy to lose our temper that we must be very careful with our reactions.

There are tricks to cultivating patience

Don’t worry, there are many tricks to teach our children to be patient. A good option is to entertain them while they wait, since everyone, not just children, has a shorter waiting time when we are busy doing something.

We adults entertain ourselves by reading a magazine when we are in the waiting room for a consultation, with them similar strategies can be applied such as looking at the window to see what happens in the outside world while our turn comes, singing a song or painting a drawing; All of these strategies can reduce the perception of elapsed time.

And even if your baby still does not have the notion of time internalized, you can teach him little by little to understand it using objects such as a clock that can visibly tell him how many minutes have passed since he set the goal that he should wait.

Establishing a routine is also a good option to help your child understand the weather. , because when they are clear about the order of things that happen in their day to day, it is easier for them to handle that very abstract concept called time.

Good Habits Help Feed Patience

Learning when to intervene in a conversation also takes patience. This is a social skill that your child can learn when he is clear about certain social norms such as that it is necessary for our interlocutor to finish explaining what he thinks to be able to use our turn.

In that aspect there are simple indications such as waiting for silences, and using them to be able to think and structure what we are going to say well, we can also explain that we can use non-verbal language to express that we want to speak, that is achieved, for example, raising our hand.

Listening to your child is also a very positive habit to cultivate his patience, especially if you know that he is tired of waiting. There are environments like the queue at the bank or the supermarket in which it is natural for children to get bored and impatient, and if we are honest, even adults get bored when it comes to standing in a long line.

Therefore, when you are queuing and you notice that your child has become impatient, try to talk to him, ask him how he feels: If he is bored, if he is tired, if he is hungry … and try to explain why it is necessary to wait for your turn and as soon as that happens you will look for a way to alleviate the situation that overwhelms you. Sometimes simply by expressing what is wrong and feeling taken into account and listened to, your mood can change.

Another good idea is to leave the house armed with a “patience kit” which can contain a toy, a story, a cell phone charger in case you like talking on the phone with your little brothers or grandparents and why not, an amulet that Help you remind yourself that to teach your child to be patient you must have twice what he requires.

Your good spirits and your inventiveness to distract and entertain him, even your desire to play, in addition to your cunning to keep him away from the things that make him impatient, such as a supermarket box full of sweets that he wants, will make you buy time from time in that task that means educating your baby with love and sweetness.