It’s a fact. No one likes waiting. But who hates waiting even more? Yep, kids and especially pre-schoolers. These young souls don’t even know what patience means, let alone why it matters in life. Even before learning to be patient, they have to learn the basics – namely, how to cope with different situations. Only after they have learned to cope, will they be able to learn to be patient. Still, cultivating patience in your kids is an important aspect of parenting and it is required for anyone to be successful in school and life. Read on to learn 8 awesome activities for teaching patience to your kids.
Why Patience matters
Whether you are waiting in a queue, waiting for your turn in a bank or you are at the grocery shop, everyone knows the hurdle of being patient until the task is over. But, as most adults manage to walk through these chores, having a kid along with you makes even the simplest task a gruesome one. Kids start to get fidgety, loud, and whine at every single second that passes by. Sometimes kids get on your nerves, which makes the situation so much worse.
Toddlers, small kids, and preschoolers don’t actually have the ability to delay gratification. Even a short wait may seem like an eternity for them. These characteristics differ from child to child, some are more patient than others while some just know how to throw in some tantrums.
But as parents, it is a must to inculcate the virtue of patience from early on. By being patient, it enables them to make wiser decisions when they grow up, teach them the value of discipline and kindness, and most importantly, make them gentle in nature.
From MomsCove: Emotions for kids: 6 Actionable Tips to Increase Emotional Intelligence
But why do we need to teach kids patience? They would eventually learn it as they grow older
Patience is a virtue that can take you places. With patience, you can avoid making hasty decisions. Life is about accepting the present moment, and not living in the past or future. In this modern age, most of us have forgotten this value and we are irritated even at the slightest things – traffic jams, standing in a queue, a baby crying, and such things. In short, patience is the key to make us better people.
Now, like every other virtue that we teach our kids, patience also needs to be cultivated from early on. If kids learn to be patient in their early stages of life, they will know how to handle tricky and important situations that come up later in their teenage and adolescence. They will have a better understanding of situations, will not succumb to peer pressure, and thus make better choices.
Parents know how difficult it can get when handling teenagers and adolescents. But if you want to make things easier for you, in the long run, inculcating patience in kids is the key.
Here are 8 awesome ways in which you can inculcate patience in your kids:
1. Story-Telling
Story-telling is one of the best ways to teach morals and values to kids. Telling stories that highlight the value of being patient is the right direction to go. Storytelling is an art, and many parents may not be able to effectively narrate a story. In reality, though, it does not matter how good you are at it, and by starting to read out stories to kids, you can gain more confidence to do so. After all, practice makes us perfect.
If you are unable to recollect stories, use storybooks. If you don’t have storybooks, make stories of your own. Tell them of an experience you had when you were growing up. Tell them of a situation that happened at the office. Make your child realize what happened when a particular person could not be patient. Tell them a story of another kid, whose impatient actions had some consequences.
Highlighting the importance of patience through stories is quite an effective way of sowing the seeds of this value in your kids. Explaining to them the disadvantages of impatience will help them grasp the meaning of the stories and thus, they can start practicing being patient in their daily lives.
Also from MomsCove: Storytelling for Kids: A Complete Guide for Parents
2. Play some games
Children are naturally instinctive and they love to learn. Just like adults, they also love to share what they know. While you are waiting for your turn at the doctor’s place or standing in a queue with your child, let your children show off what they know. You can give them a particular keyword – suppose say ‘animals’, or ‘food’ and then let them name all the examples that they know.
You can even ask them to point out the parts of their body. What is more enjoyable, is if you can correlate it to any song that they know – “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes“. Also, board games, toys, and stuffed animals are great ways to get creative with them and start a mini conversation that would help you distract them from the current ordeal.
3. Get Childish
One way to distract your kids from the hurdle of waiting is by being silly with them. Just have fun with them. Singing out the wrong lyrics of their favorite songs, or making silly errors will make your child laugh and forget the situation – at least for a few moments.
Sing “5 little monkeys jumping on a cat, one fell down and bumped his back“, and you’ll notice your child will frown upon your mistake. They might not correct you or understand what you are trying in the first few instances, but slowly they will start correcting you and it’s up to you to play along and correct yourself and ask them to sing along. As they know the real words of the song, they will giggle when you make these changes.
While singing the song ” Mommy finger, Mommy’s finger, where are you?”, point your ring finger and sing. You will notice your child will tell you “Mom, that’s not Mommy Finger. It’s this one”. The key is that you need to be creative and play along with them. You can also try making funny facial expressions, produce a funny sound effect or start rhyming a song that you just made for the situation you are in. No one is going to judge you for being silly with your kids.
4. Always carry their favorite stuff along with you
For toddlers and small kids, you already carry those diapers and wipes everywhere you go. Usually, when they are that small, they don’t make a lot of fuss, either at home or outside. But as they grow up, they tend to become more impatient.
So, when you are going out with your child, don’t forget to pack his favorite stuff in your bag. Always be prepared. It could be their favorite snack, a toy, or a utensil (yeah, it’s true!). It may be a good idea to bring a small picture book or a mini-board game along with you too. You can bring them out only during the long waits, so your child doesn’t have to associate these long hours of waiting as a tedious exercise. Maybe bring along some aluminum foil, or papers and start making different shapes or teach him/her some basic origami for that matter. You can take turns during this activity, and your child may not even realize how those long hours have passed by!
5. Make your child help you out
This kind of activity can be helpful both at home and while you’re outside. Asking them to help you out is one way to distract them as well as maybe help them learn a few things along the way. One such example is asking them to help you count coins. Bring along the big collection of coins you’ve got, and ask them to count them for you. You don’t need to ask them to segregate them according to value, just count them.
When going out, you can carry a stack of coins, or a bundle of $1 bills (any small denomination notes). While you are waiting for your turn, if your child starts becoming jittery, hand them the bundle and ask them to count it for you. The same can be done for shopping items. Ask them to count the number of items in the bag, or maybe you can read the list out and ask them to check whether all the items are there in the bag.
These are just a few examples of how you can make things a bit more convenient for you and your kids. In the end, what matters is that they shouldn’t associate the waiting period with a ‘boring period’.
Also Read: 7 Fun Things to do at Home with Kids to Make Life More Exciting.
6. Collect Rainwater
Whenever there is a shower or a light drizzle, ask your kids to place a container or bowl on the window-sill and wait for it to fill up. This can also be done on a balcony or outside the front/back door of your house. The entire process of waiting for the bowl to fill up can be an interesting way to teach them to remain calm. They will learn to sit still for some time and thus it starts building patience in your little ones.
7. The Giftwrap Game
Usually, kids can’t hold their excitement when they are offered gifts. It would be harsh to ask them to wait longer just so that they can grab their gifts and toys. But one nice way of making this activity fun is by wrapping the gifts in multiple layers, where the number of layers could be as many as you want (that would take a lot of patience from your end as well).
Then you can ask your kid to take turns and unwrap the gifts slowly, one layer at a time. You can involve more members of the family too. This way, the child will learn to patiently wait until the final layer has been unwrapped. Finally, she can have a look at the gift. Over the course of time, whenever you gift them something, practice this step and they will learn more after each iteration. This also teaches them one life lesson – “The fruit of patience is always rewarding”.
8. The Phone Call
A lot of times, parents offer their phones just to keep their children a bit quiet. But, you can also turn this activity into a learning process for them as well. You can teach your kid not to disturb you when you get a call, or when you are having a conversation with someone.
Whenever you want to stop them from using the phone, or you need to call someone, call your phone from a different number and ask them to hand it over to you. Initially, they might scream and whine, but you need to be consistent. Over time, you will see their behavior will change and they will not disturb you or shout whenever you need the phone or you need to talk to someone. In fact, this is a great way to also teach them how to cope.
Also from MomsCove:
- How to Create a Good Family Media Plan For Safe & Effective Media Use
- 5 Simple Tips to Stop Your Child from Becoming Mobile Phone Addict
Key points to remember
Don’t forget to praise them:
Rewarding them or praising them when they behave well is the most vital step. You can offer them kudos for being the nicest kid ever, or you can cook them their favorite meal. This way your children will feel proud of themselves and reinforcing this positive behavior raises the chances of them repeating the same next time around. So, don’t forget to praise them even in the simplest way possible.
Be the role model:
Your child is always observing you. They are always learning from you. Being aware of your words, your tone, and your body language, while you have to wait for something, is very crucial. Kids usually don’t know how to express their feelings of displeasure. So, it is up to you to sense those feelings. Offer them words of comfort every time they feel jittery. Acknowledging their struggle will make them naturally try a bit more to remain calm.
Conclusion
I have mentioned 8 activities using which you can help your child develop patience. But the most important thing to remember is the fact that to teach patience to your kids, you need to be super-duper patient as well. Developing any kind of skill or teaching values to kids takes a lot of time. As a parent, you must not lose patience yourself and give up along the way. Consistency is the key to achieving any kind of success. And in these cases, it’s your child’s overall development that is at stake.
What are your opinions on this matter of teaching Patience to your kids. Share your thoughts and pointers. Remember every parent has a different take when it comes to teaching their kids something new. Share it with us so that parents like us and others can benefit from it. Like our article, if you have found it useful and don’t forget to share it with others.
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