Parenting can really test our patience, but it’s patience that we need the most in this journey. Here are some tips to help you better parent with patience & love and create more peace in your home.
My kids have an uncanny gift. They seem to know exactly what to say and do to really make me crazy. This isn’t helped any by the circumstances that have kept us home and in each other’s space for quite a while.
Now, I love my kids and choose to be a mom who works at home and homeschools. So it’s not that I don’t want to spend time with them. But loving them and enjoying their company doesn’t mean there aren’t times when my patience is kicked right to the curb and I feel cartoon steam coming out of my ears.
Have you been there?
Not too long ago, I read the book The Christian Parenting Handbook: 50 Heart-based Strategies for All the Stages of Your Child’s Life by Dr. Scott Turansky & Joanne Miller. It was a really comprehensive look at all the different areas parents run into issues with their kids, from lying to tantrums to bad friend choices.
There were a few takeaways that stuck with me from this book, which centered on parenting with patience and love. We may think we are being loving in all our parenting, but I know personally, I am sometimes too frustrated to show my love.
With this in mind, here are a few tips for parenting with patience and love. Keeping these two things at the forefront during conversations and confrontations will improve our relationships with our children and make our home more peaceful.
Tips for Parenting with Patience and Love
[Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links. Please see below for more details]
Start with love before discipline
Have you ever had to discipline your child because they did something wrong, handed down the appropriate consequence, but still felt horrible afterward? Why?
If we are being just, then why are we feeling bad as parents? Even after we hug and talk to our kids. Because the discipline came first. Love should always be first.
When our kids misstep, before we start correcting and disciplining, we need to reach out in love. They need to know that discipline is about teaching, not punishment.
And they need to know that we still love them, despite the errors of judgement or bad behavior.
Before consequences are given, stop and hug your child and remind them that being disappointed, or frustrated, or annoyed does not mean they are not still loved.
When we parent with patience and love, our children will be better attuned to the things we say and teach them.
It’s not about you
I looked around the messy room for the third time that week. I had asked my daughter to straighten it up multiple times. Now, I was fuming.
How hard was it to do a quick clean-up? Was it too much to ask that she listen to her mother? How could she be so disrespectful?
When I start to hear these questions flitting through my head, I know I need to put the brakes on. These aren’t about a messy room or even my daughter. These are about me.
Parenting is a selfless act undertaken by intrinsically selfish people. I know that sounds harsh, but there is truth in it. We are not perfect, and parenting pushes up against a natural selfishness that lives in us all.
When I start reprimanding my child because I feel disrespected, or because I wonder what other parents will think of them and me, I know that I’ve veered off the course of parenting and straight into the land of making it all about me.
But it’s not about me. It’s not about me getting respect or the opinions of other moms at the playground. It’s about my child and their heart.
My job isn’t to look like mother of the year on social media or receive total obedience from my children. My job is to protect and nurture my children’s hearts until they are strong enough to do it themselves.
So when I start to make it about me, I remind myself that it’s really about them. And I’ll have a clean room a lot faster if I reach for their hearts with patience and love rather than recriminations and selfishness.
You’re not the child, so be the adult
It’s embarrassing to say, but there are many times I want to stoop to my child’s level. To respond to their “I don’t want to do ____” with my own “Well, I don’t want to do _____.” It’s the equivalent of sticking your tongue out at a kid who stuck his out first.
Parenting with patience means not allowing frustration to get the better of you. Because kids need parents. Not big kids who tell them what to do. They need adults to care for them, feed them, and guide them.
We can’t guide our kids’ behavior if we set our own at grade-school level.
Be the adult. Even when our inner frustrated child is wanting to stick out its tongue, be the adult. It’s what our kids need from us, what they need to see and model, so let’s be sure to give it to them. Even when our patience is running thin.
Have a safe place for them to go, not a punishment place
“Go to your room!”
How many times have we as parents said this? Some of us do it as a punishment. Some do it to give both parties a cooling off period. I know I do it when I feel like I am about to say something I will surely regret later (I would send myself to my room, but that’s just not doable with 4 other kids needing me).
But sending kids away sometimes sends the wrong message. We say, “go to your room,” and they hear, “go away.” Sending kids to their room should be less about punishment and more about giving them a safe place to work through emotions and thoughts that are upsetting them.
When you’re not upset, talk to your kids about their room being a safe space for them. Remind them that parents and kids both lose their patience and tempers, and they can go to that place and take time to calm down.
This idea can serve them not just when they are in conflict with you, but when they argue with siblings, friends, or experience anything that upsets them.
Parenting with patience and love can send our kids the right message in how to love one another, even with differing ideas and attitudes. If we start with love, consequences and discipline stop seeming like a punishment and start feeling like a learning experience. It will also lead to more peace in your home and family.
What tips do you have for parenting with patience and love? How have your kids responded to these practices? I’d love to hear in the comments here or on social media (#thejourneyathome)!
Want to read more on parenting and patience? Check out these posts:
Why We Need to Do Our Best and Let Go
What I’m Reading… The Lifegiving Parent
What I’m Reading… The Lifegiving Parent
[Disclaimer: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. This post contains affiliate links. So, if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a commission, at no additional cost to you. All opinions are my own and I never recommend anything I haven’t used myself and loved.]
Leave a Reply