How to Regain Patience When Your Child Is Driving You Crazy
Earlier this week, I asked single parents for the best parenting tips, because if anyone is suppressing parenting, it is those who do it mostly alone. A lot of great tips have been offered: plan all of your toothbrushes in tandem, go to bed when the kids go to bed, prepare for the new day first, and use the daycare at the gym.
Many of the tips I found useful for all parents, but especially this tip from commenter Jackie Steele, which can finally help me solve my persistent problem with patience:
I am the only parent of a 7 year old child, but 10 years ago I was a nanny. My parenting trick is the trick I use when we have something that my child really doesn’t like. For example, my daughter hated taking a bath for a while. Sometimes I found it difficult to be patient. One particularly unpleasant bath, I mentally cried for Mary Poppins and realized the answer: it’s easier to be a nanny because they are not your children !?
So my advice is, when you’ve reached the end of your rope, pretend you’re caring for someone’s kids! When you mentally switch from parenting to childcare, your emotional investment changes. It suddenly becomes easier to remain calm and patient, and this is a kind of mental vacation. You are still conscious and caring, and you are getting your way. And like me, you can really come up with new and creative solutions as you now have a fresh perspective!
Introduce. They. Are. Someone. Rest. Children.
You have no choice but to keep the kindness in your voice – they are not your children. You don’t take it personally – because they are not your children. Kids are just acting sometimes, right? Not your children, not your problem!
Now you should use it sparingly. For eighteen years in a row, pretending that your children do not belong to you is not the best option; they will definitely figure it out after a while, and it won’t do your relationship good.
But in those particularly unpleasant moments, when they are hysterical in the middle of the grocery store, or talk back to you again , or are just generally unpleasant, you can distance yourself from the behavior and lower the rates, pretending that you are just a nanny.