Parents that practicing and teaching patience activities to toddlers are a big deal. Well, we will crack this myth by sharing simple tips. It is easier than they can imagine.
Patience is a great skill, and parents should actively try to make their children learn it from a young age. It is the initial step towards developing a great career, relationships, and overall a successful life. Research shows that with regular positive reinforcement, parents can inculcate this skill into the personality of their children even when they are just toddlers.
How to teach patience to a toddler?
Given below are some of the most famous teaching patience activities for parents to practice so that their children can grasp the core idea of this skill.
1. Make the Concept Positive
The process of teaching the value of patience should be easy for parents to practice, and even easier for children to understand. For instance, you can ask them to wait for food, their outdoor playtime, cartoons, etc. Well, they will ask you tens of times that if it’s time yet? You have to stay patient because you know they cannot conceptualize time. Rather than screaming at them or punishing them for asking, again and again, you may stay calm. In this way, they will learn that it is not a negative experience, rather a positive one.
2. Avoid Mindless Promises
Most of the parents make mindless promises with children to distract them and assume that they will forget soon. Well, what happens exactly is that it destroys their ability to develop an accurate sense of time. Moreover, it will give the wrong idea about the wait that in this case is longer than normal. So, you take the responsibility of the toddler patience challenge, you have to make sure that you keep every promise. Also, you have to be very accurate about the promise. Never dodge them with something else while you promise about an entirely different thing. Do not think that they will get distracted after some time or forget about it. It is sure that their concept about the wait and its results will have a negative impact.
3. Do not Blame Them
Cecilia Yeung, the founder of Little Discoverer shares her experience of dealing with kids who have short tempers. “Parents should understand that a child’s temperament is not only shaped by his upbringing but is also determined by genetics. As a matter of fact, studies show that 20% to 60% of temperament is determined by genetics. Therefore, don’t criticize your child right away, but guide him by showing your empathy and understanding.”
4. Answer with Information
For instance, you are traveling somewhere, and your toddler keeps on asking “are we there yet?” or “How long it will take?”. Never mind, and keep calm. Instead of shouting at them, and giving them meaningless answers, make sure you answer with information. You can give exact information about the number of hours or minutes. Even if you are a tutor teaching patience in the classroom, similar activities can help a lot.
5. Make Use of Visual Tools
We are all humans, and as parents, we usually feel exhausted or tired of teaching a whole lot of things to our children. For them, teaching patience activities can be in the form of visual tools. One example is a countdown timer. You can make it visible in your vehicle so that your children sitting on the back seats can see it, and count the time themselves. Other than this, you can put a map on the wall, and use a small car to cover the distance towards your destination.
Conclusion
Those parents who are teaching patience activities to middle schoolers, elementary students, or teenagers make sure that the first practice patience themselves. It is not easy for parents to learn the art of how to teach patience to a toddler. But, if they understand a few things as we shared in the article, they can make the process quite simple for them. Not only their toddlers will earn the concept of patience, but it will become part of their personality. Life will surely be easy for them when they will grow up.