How to develop patience ?
Patience, the most traveled path as parents
The benefits of patience
Patience is a manifestation of Love and leads us to tolerance, to the understanding of different situations, therefore to better understand others in their emotions, their ideas, etc… It is unconditional Love.
A patient person is calm. They create an environment of trust around them that defeats any attempt at anger.
Now that we know some of the many benefits, let’s learn to cultivate patience by enjoying the present moment, putting into perspective what takes us out of this precious inner peace.
Are we aware of our own needs and those of others in order to understand the situations that lead us to break out of our shells? We should regularly check our own inner states, in order to identify the emotions at play. Once both peace and calm have returned to our hearts, let’s enjoy the results!
How do you teach patience to a child?
Through example
How many parents face their children’s impatience on a daily basis? Being patient yourself as a parent, is an excellent teaching tool. It is actions, not words, that can lead them to be patient themselves.
Through playing
Besides puzzles, patience can be taught to children by doing fun everyday tasks. For example, let’s plant some seeds and let the child water them and find out how long it takes for them to grow.
Through observation
While outside, let’s ask our child to find examples of patience in nature, such as building a bird’s nest, a spider’s web, the work of ants… If he can’t, let’s help him discover these together.
Discover the basic virtue and passion versus patience
Who hasn't had to forgive at some point, if only to himself?
Understanding Anger
Use our games to help children understand the importance of patience.
A great gift for our children would be if, from an early age, they were able to develop a vocabulary related to Forgiveness and its counterpart, Anger, which would lead them to Patience.
For example, if a player draws the card of Patience, you can ask participants to share an event or a testimony related to this virtue.
Playing VirtHU, Karma Buster or KaHUna is to better understand the sources of our sensitivities, to learn to know ourselves better and to develop our faith in life. And much more, one game at a time.
Testimony about patience
Q: Pascale, how could Patience have helped you as a mother of three sons?
A: Not only do we not have a manual that comes with the birth of a child, but the importance of patience has probably not been taught or demonstrated to us in the past. Yet it is a crucial virtue as a parent!
Personally, I had a great example of patience with my dear mother. On the other hand, in this area, I got more of my father’s genes, who was not really patient. Moreover, in my bourgeois upbringing in France, children must respect their parents, and they must not interrupt adults when they speak. In fact a wise child is one who knows how to keep quiet, which I had to apply myself as a child.
In fact, even though I had a certain amount of patience and good intentions, my dear angels managed to do a good job of exhausting it on a regular basis… My father-in-law used to tell me that I wasn’t made to have children. He was certainly a model of patience, and he often irritated me!
I am well aware today that if I had been armed with a beautiful and durable patience, it would have allowed me to know how to listen, to understand and to educate my children without getting angry! To do this, I would have had to learn to connect to my immeasurable supply of love, in other words, to my heart, instead of thinking with my head, which regularly guided me to an easy explosion.
This still happens to me, but thankfully less often, because once I open up to my heart, calmness naturally returns: a ripple that disturbs the surface of a lake does not affect the tranquility of its depth.”
