How I Practice Patient Parenting

*disclaimer, these are my own opinions. I am not a doctor. If you have any concerns with you or your child’s behavior, please seek a medical professional. also, if you want to watch a video of me talking about this, click here.

Helloooo again friends!

Today we are talking about something I am sooOooOo passionate about:

Patient Parenting.

I believe that “patient parenting” should be the standard of how we parent and treat our children. Not because I think I know best or that it’s my way or the highway, but because being kind, understanding, patient, and communicative are basic standards and characteristics we should all possess ~ whether we’re dealing with young children or adults.

But I know that that’s not the world we live in and I’m aware that my idea of how to parent differs a lot from those around me, especially living in Hawaii.

The culture here tends to reflect my Japanese culture in the sense where you can’t “talk back”, you must do exactly what you’re told, and if you don’t there will be some sort of physical consequence. I grew up like this.

Until a year ago, I had full intentions of raising, my son, Noah like this. He’s now 16 months old.

Once he started to crawl and do things on his own, I saw opportunities to spank or raise my voice when he wasn’t listening, but I just couldn’t do it. In front of me was a child who was not listening ~ and it did get frustrating ~ but I realized that same child just didn’t understand.

I personally didn’t and don’t want to be the kind of parent that punishes my child for simply not understanding ~ especially when they’re at an age where they literally are not capable of understanding.

Let’s give an example here:

Your baby/young toddler is throwing their food on the ground. Obviously that’s not okay. You tell them to stop. They don’t. In this moment, you can yell and spank to correct their behavior. Doing this may prevent this behavior from happening again {but probs will still happen}, but it doesn’t get to the root cause. At a young age, they probably think that throwing food on the ground is fun to do and watch. But actually talking to them about why we don’t throw food on the ground and then modeling this behavior will help them to understand and process things in the long run. They may not understand or correct their behavior immediately, but reinforcing this new rule will set healthy boundaries for your child and they’ll eventually understand that food is not for throwing on the ground.

Can this be exhausting? Yes. Will it be frustrating? Yes. But that’s what. PARENTING. IS.

Being patient and understanding with our children ~ at any age ~ shouldn’t come second fiddle to “I’m tired because I had a long day at work”. Of course we’re human and we have our good and bad days, but these “bad days” where we’re impatient with a short fuse shouldn’t total up to equal our children’s entire childhood.

There have been countless times where I’ve been in Target and I have heard a parent yelling at their children ~ as young as about one year old ~ saying things like:

“Shut the fuck up already!”

“Just shut your mouth already. I’m tired of hearing you talk”

“If you don’t sit down I’m going to whack you across the head”

………

I was always heart broken when hearing these things.

There’s obviously so much to the story that I don’t know, but I also can’t imagine saying these words with a mean tone to my or any child…. or adult, if i’m being honest.

Maybe your child is hungry. Maybe they’ve been running errands with you all day. Maybe they’re bored. I don’t know the circumstance but I don’t think their parent did either.

You know what I did see though? A defeated looking child.

Maybe they got their child to sit or be quiet, but at what cost?

What price are we paying to make sure WE’RE convenienced?

To what length are we going to go to ensure that we can do the least amount of work and put in the least amount of effort to raise “not bad” human beings?

I know everyone’s circumstances are different and even those who implement patient parenting techniques have difficult children. But more often than not, they’ll grow out of it and when they do, they’ll be fully confident in the love, understanding, kindness, and patience their parents had for them.

Again, this isn’t to discredit anyone else’s experiences but instead just sharing my views on how I aim to parent my son.

I’m excited to learn more and be better.

That’s all I got for ya today.

Sending you all love + light.

xx, Laurena