Whoever Said Patience is a Virtue Did Not Have a 3 year old

I am not a very patient person.
I am, in fact, quite the opposite of patient.
I look up movies on IMBD before seeing them because we're poor and I can't wait for them to come to Redbox.
I eat food when it's still too hot.
I can rarely keep presents from my son for Christmas's or birthdays, causing me to have to go buy MORE right before his birthday.
As a teenager, I would change into the new clothes I had just bought at the mall instead of taking them home first.

There are many other examples I could give you, but I feel like that paints enough of a picture for you to understand my impatience.

So, unfortunately, my lack of this virtue tends to work it's way into my parenting style. This has caused me to easily loose my temper resulting in yelling and sometimes spanking my son to do what I thought was teaching him how to properly behave.

And that works...if you want your child to be afraid of you.

But it's not the approach to take if you want your child to respect you and do what you ask because they know it's the right thing to do and because they know WHY it's the right thing to do.

So, story time.

My husband, my son and I were at dinner. I don't remember what Kaiden was doing, but it was his usual acting out of some sort and it had been repetitive. So for whatever reason, I popped him on the mouth and very sternly told him not to do whatever it was he was doing (something to do with his mouth as I try to make punishments fit the crime).
My husbands eyes grew wide and he asked startled "Do you always hit him??"
I immediately became defensive, "I didn't hit him. I just popped his mouth, I would never hit him."

But I had.

And it didn't show Kaiden that I loved him and that I understood he was a child who isn't going to behave all the time.

It showed him that if he does something he isn't supposed to, I'm not going to calmly try to teach him what he should do instead and help him understand why he shouldn't do that particular action, but that I am going to hurt him.
Either physically with spankings and "poppings" or emotionally by yelling.
I would never reach over and smack Jake on the mouth if he said something I didn't like, so why on earth was I doing this with my son?

Because it was so much easier than being patient. It was easier than being understanding, holding my breath to calm down, and addressing the situation in a way that may take much more work to get the desired result of obedience.

So back to the dinner table, a slightly heated discussion about how to discipline our children ensued. I felt I was not wrong in my approach. I wasn't beating Kaiden. He was perfectly fine and now he knew not to do what he did.

But Jake had a much wiser approach then I would ever expect from a 21 year old father, but then he's always been much older and wiser than he actually is. He has always been the one to keep me grounded and help me see how to handle things in better ways.

He told me he thought that we should give Kaiden excessive amounts of positive reinforcement to encourage him to do the things we want him to do and later we can combine that with reasoning with him (when he's at the appropriate age level to do so). Yelling and spanking would get us no where. He will only continue to be upset and it wont stop the undesired behavior. We need to show love and patience and redirect the negative action into a positive one.

I threw my hands in the air and said "Fine. Be my guest." And the next thing I said is crucial as to why what I was doing wasn't working: "I don't have the patience"

So later that night before bed, Jake asked Kaiden to help him clean his toys. Kaiden did what he always does: he dropped to the ground and wailed and proceeded to kick whatever was closest to him.
Now here is where I would have raised my voice and yelled "Get up and put your toys away NOW!" and possibly yanked him over to his toys.

Jake stayed calm, helped Kaiden sit up, and started to put toys away again asking him to put his toys away. Kaiden angrily threw one car into the bucket as if to say "I'm going to do this, but you're not going to like how I do it!"
Jake immediately praised him like crazy.
Kaiden smiled and threw another car in.
Jake praised him some more.
With in seconds Kaiden was cleaning up his cars, no crying, no fits.

I was instantly humbled. I knew I was wrong, and that this is what I should have been doing all along.

I can't say that I'm perfect, I still slip up and lose my temper and raise my voice occasionally. BUT I'm trying very hard to always respond to Kaiden with love and patience.

Because he's just a child who is learning how to be his own little person and he needs my love as he figures that out, not my wrath.

So now, instead of yelling, I take a deep breath, bite my tongue, and force through the much more difficult patient approach in hopes that some day it will not be so difficult and it will be as easy to respond with love and tolerance as it is for me to respond with anger and frustration.

I'll let you know how it goes :)