Serenity Now!

I had to chuckle when I saw a veteran teacher step outside her classroom at break time. She closed her eyes, stretched her hands in a mindful pose, took a deep breath and said aloud, “Serenity now!” , quoting a Seinfeld scene. She took another breath, opened her eyes, and we shared a knowing laugh. It was proving to be a challenging day and she was humorously acknowledging her need to regroup and recharge.

In dealing with active and curious young children, patience isn’t so much a virtue as it is the outcome of building up some personal reserves of inner calm and becoming more practiced at helpful behaviors that are hard to muster on the fly when we aren’t at our best. Every parent has their moments. Some of us have many more of those moments than we expected to have, or we experience them more intensely than we thought possible. Some of us have incessantly challenging children. Others of us may just be lacking in skills and knowledge that would equip us to relate more calmly in stressful moments.

If you’ve noticed you lose your patience more and more frequently or find you are out of effective tools to maintain your composure in the heat of the moment, here are a few basic things to try that help most people.

1.     Be Prepared: Take time to practice beforehand an approach or response you think will be effective. It might be adopting a phrase you’ve heard modeled at Kidspace. It might be thinking through how something you usually phrase in the negative could be transformed into a positive. For example, instead of saying, “No, no, no! You may NOT hit the baby,” try, “Gentle touches. Show baby a gentle touch.” Instead of, “Get down from there! No climbing!” try, “Feet on the floor please. That’s not safe. I’m concerned the dresser might tip over on your body. That would really hurt.” Imagine how you wish to be, then act in that manner when emotions run high.

2.     Get Some Rest and Personal Space: I can hear you now. “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! I wish! Fist I was up and down all night for months on end, and now I can’t even go to the bathroom alone!” You will acquire some of the space and time you need for yourself when you are intentional about making your own inner needs a priority. Assess if you are getting enough sleep and take one small step to change that if it is inadequate. Write down on paper what you are doing to get the mental/ physical space you need to refuel and refresh your outlook and level of patience. Make regular time to get that space away and make a plan with your partner so it happens consistently. Maybe for you that might look like participating in a fitness class or hiring a sitter for a weekly date night with your partner or time to spend with friends. Trade playdates with other parents so you can get a couple hours of down-time (not to run errands, but just to be by yourself, take a walk, read, nap, stare into space). This is what author Anne LaMotte refers to as radical self-care. It is not selfish to take care of your essential mental and spiritual needs. People need wide margins on the pages of their lives. If your daily pages are crammed full out to the edges, it’s not healthy for you or your family. Your need for rest, calm, outdoor time, movement, good nutrition, and just daydreaming from time to time are ligit. Your family will cope without you just fine during those moments you create in your day to recharge, so put the guilt away.

3.     Give Yourself a 15% Mess Up Factor: Sometimes you just expect too much of yourself. All or nothing thinking might be keeping you from noticing incremental gains you might work on. None of us is a perfect, all knowing parent. You have growing edges just like the rest of the humans on this planet. Stop expecting perfection of yourself as a parent and put away self-shaming thoughts. Giving yourself permission to be a “good-enough parent” is good enough. Seattle’s own John Gottman has researched familial relationships for decades. His findings gave rise to his advocacy of Emotion Coaching (explained here). He discovered that parents who remember to use the 5 simple steps of emotion coaching half the time achieve the same positive outcomes and benefits as those who do it even more frequently. Progress, not perfection, as they say. Aim for being good enough and hit the reset button for yourself if you don’t handle an emotion-filled moment with your child well. There are plenty of opportunities to do better next time.

4.     Keep a developmental perspective: It will help your patience increase exponentially if you keep in mind that very young children are developmentally incapable of considering the viewpoints of others, you included. They will behave in exasperating ways. They are supposed to. It is a normal part of all human being’s development to go through regular cycles of disequilibrium throughout childhood. Being able to comprehend that there are other minds that have separate plans and feelings from their own will not start coming into place for most kids until sometime between kindergarten and second grade. Before then they need lots and lots and LOTS of practice. They also need  coaching and allowances for mistakes, do-overs and opportunities to clean up the relational messes they make in their interactions with others. They need and deserve our understanding of their capabilities and limitations. Too often we have big “shoulds” in the way of our seeing kids abilities clearly. Shaming and blaming when children seem willful and manipulative are ineffective reactions that tend to just make the behaviors that exasperate us increase or go underground rather than grow into more positive, prosocial behaviors. Children’s executive function (the seat of their ability to self-regulate their emotions and control their own behaviors) continues to grow and will not be fully mature until sometime between ages 21 and 25. It’s a long trajectory of learning self-control, how to be in healthy relationship with others, and to act with respect for other people’s feelings and needs. Become familiar with realistic expectations for the different ages and stages of child development.

5.     Breathe: It really works and it’s simple. When you feel upset in the heat of the moment, excuse yourself from the situation, take a deep breath through your nose and exhale it very slowly through pursed lips. Listen to your breathing in and out for several of these deep breaths. When we teachers do calming breaths like this with children to help them regain their composure we say, “Smell the flower, blow out the candle.” You may not achieve “serenity now,” but as you practice you will find a calmer state of mind and gain a moment to think of how you might best respond to what’s stressing you out.

What do you do to gain or maintain patience? Share your experiences with us in the comments below.