Parenting is…

Patience with kids is considered one of the biggest virtues a parent can have. Watching a mother interact with her two-year-old, lookers-on might pay wistful compliments to her unending patience and express their doubts at their own ability to be similarly virtuous under the same circumstances.

I believe that patience is a misapplied term in this context. Furthermore, your level of patience is largely determined by your temperament, the amount of sleep you had this week and how many people have irritated you this morning. You may be the most impatient person on this planet, but that should not prevent you from keep a calm demeanor in a particular situation. In other words, you don’t suddenly grow patience as a result of becoming a parent.  You gain something else instead.

Imagine spending an hour in the doctor’s waiting room waiting for your appointment. By the time your name is called, you are probably ready to explain to him just what you think of the way he runs his practice, if you are anything like me. Now imagine you missed your appointment because you flaked; you call the office apologetically and they agree to see you the same day. You show up an hour later than you agreed, but they are still willing to take you. Now the wait isn’t so bad!

I guess it all depends on your perspective, your goals and your evaluation of the situation. If your two-year-old were your spouse, you’d probably kick him out on his butt after the one-hundredth tantrum. Yet you find yourself holding and comforting him as he repeats, “Mommy bad! Out mommy! Go away!” Is that patience?  Well, if you believed that the toddler’s goal were to offend you and he was being deliberately mean, with full understanding of his actions, perhaps that’s what it would be. And I have very little patience for that kind of a thing. What I have instead is the understanding of what’s going on, empathy and perspective. The truth is, I tell myself, he is stressed and upset. He hasn’t learned to cope with his newly developing emotional responses and he is the one having a hard time. What might have triggered this outburst? How can I help?

The other day, Alex was distraught in a way that’s rare for him. He was crying hard and nothing would comfort him. Daddy had been watching TV with him, which was very special. Now it was dinner time and daddy left (the invitation for Alex to come along notwithstanding) and Alex was distraught. No amount of explanations did any good.

I said, “Alex, are you sad? Sad because you want to watch TV with daddy?”  “Ye-ye-yeah!” came a sobbing response. I had his attention. “You are mad that he left for dinner?”  “Yeah! Yeah!” a more emphatic response as he began walking toward me.  “You know something?” I said as I picked him up (now willing) into my lap.  “It happens to me all the time.  I’ll be talking to daddy, and he’ll get up and leave to go potty.  I get so mad! Sometimes he won’t even say anything, leaving me guessing why he left. I guess, there are just thing that we have to do sometimes.  There is eating, potty, sleeping…”  I had his full attention by this time as he was listening to me talk, obviously interested.  “Hmmm… what else do we have to do? Grocery shopping.” “No! Grocery truck!” He was referring to the vons.com delivery we often get. “That’s right! We have the grocery truck come over so we don’t have to do so many things. So we could spend the time together and enjoy it! That’s why we have Anna clean the house, so you and I could do more things together. He started talking: about Anna, the girl from the grocery store, hugs and kisses, and everything else that whirls around in a toddler’s head. I was beaming, proud that I solved the problem so well.  My husband looked at us with joy and pride.

Patience? Anything but! This required no more patience than solving any other problem: it required thinking instead. Hard thinking, serious mental effort, a clear mind. Patience would have been sitting through hysterics and being miserable. The third best option would have been throwing him out on his butt.  So, I suppose, patience could become useful in the absence of volitional effort. But I am not the patient type. And I think you will get far better results with a little mental sweat.