Patience for Parents

Everybody could use more patience. Children, in particular, can be a trial to anyone trying to be a patient person. Parents of children have a great deal of hope and expectation invested in what they think their children should be. Parents, most of all, need to be patient with their own children.
When you are learning to be patient with kids you will learn to have realistic ideas about what kinds of behaviors children will have. Kids will be kids. To begin to have patience you need to get inside your children's heads a little. After all, to a child his problems are as big as an adult's problems are to an adult. 
Another part of patience is realizing that children take time. Everything you could do as a single person will now take twice as long with children. This goes for everything from preparing, eating and cleaning up after a meal, to getting in the car and going grocery shopping. Slow down and allow yourself more time to complete tasks when your children are with you. Another option is to think ahead and try to do things smarter. If it takes ten minutes just getting the kids in and out of the car at every stop, maybe you should patronize more businesses with drive-through service. Another option is to do all your shopping in one shopping center with one shopping buggy for your kids and bags.
Another thing about children that can sometimes require patience on the part of their parents is a child's fresh perspective on things. A fresh perspective sounds like a good thing, right? When a child's new ideas translate to creating art on your newly painted walls with magic marker, count to ten and refrain from screaming. After all the reason they may be spreading pretty colors on the walls is because they just saw you doing it last week. You did not realize you were setting an example for your kids, did you? You cannot blame your kids for trying to be just like you. Sometimes it can take a while to make the connection that that is what your child is doing. When your child does something that makes you want to go nuts, calmly ask "why did you do that?"
Sometimes parents have difficulty being patient because they are overstressed and tired from other things in their lives. Maybe it is time for the parents to get to bed earlier themselves. Schedule tasks better so that more things are getting done in the same time with more help from everybody. Sometimes the parent that spends the most time with the children, usually the mother, needs a little break time away from the kids to rest and recharge. The other parent can be a big support by allowing her that time and making sure that the kids do not totally trash the house and go with their needs unmet while she is gone. One mother, after returning from a shopping trip two hours after her children's lunch hour, was assailed at the door by crying, hungry children. She asked the father, "Why did you not feed them?" He said, "They never told me they were hungry." She asked the children, "Why did you not tell daddy you were hungry?" They said, "We did not know daddy could fix lunch!"
Most of all patience is thinking before reacting. Taking the time to understand your children will help you to know them better and find reserves of parental patience. Patience will be good for both the parents and the children.