Patience.
This might seem obvious...but maybe I should explain a little more to let you know what I mean. If we personally had all the time in the world...I don't think we would ever get mad/frustrated/angry at our kids. If you ever look back at the moments where you felt like you were not being the best parent...more than likely if you had had more time at that moment, things would have been just fine. Let me give some for-instances...
The first obvious one...involves any time that you were ever running late for something...school, the doctor, well just about anything really. Your child, at that moment, is just being a child...not caring about timelines or appointments or deadlines...just going with the flow, doing whatever it is they want to do. All of sudden you start requesting that your child get ready to go...finished getting dressed...get your shoes on...etc. And oh wait...they also have to go to the bathroom...or they're hungry...or maybe they just weren't mentally prepared to go at all. And now your child is getting upset because they're being rushed when they weren't ready to be rushed...and now you're either running late or your child is screaming in your ear because they are unhappy.
So...how could this have been avoided. Although patience is the key...it's not really the complete answer. The patience comes with spending a little more time to prepare your child to get ready to leave. Let them know well in advance so they aren't surprised when the time comes. Start getting them ready a lot earlier than you think that you might need to get ready...this allows for any of those surprises that your child might bring up that you really hadn't planned on. And also have a little patience with how long it takes them to do something...try not to rush them and try not to do it yourself. This is where having all the time in the world would be helpful...because it seems more often than not, that we don't have that little bit of extra time to do those things. So unfortunately, no matter how many times you do try to plan for this...there will probably be times where things still won't work out in your or your child's favor. C'est la vie. Just try and roll with it as much as you can.
Another for-instance is...whenever your child is trying something for the first time...or maybe just hadn't gotten the hang of doing something and is trying it out again. It's REAL easy to stop a child who's struggling at something and for you to just do it for them. I would strongly encourage you NOT to interrupt them...even if they're doing it wrong or just not quite the way that YOU want them to do it (because in THEIR world, who's to say what's right for them). Here's were the patience comes in...just do your best to sit back and let them try and do it. And not just that, but try to encourage them to do it on their own and figure it out. Having that bit of patience to let them make those mistakes and do it on their own will teach them so much more than just you showing them how you would do it...and not only that, but it will empower them and should encourage them to try more things out on their own in the future.
Now that I've said all this, I will admit that I'm not the shining example of everything I just said...and not even the majority of the time either. The problem is, we weren't necessarily parented like this when we were kids. So not matter how much we know we should be doing something a particular way...there's so many times when we won't do those things because another set of "rules" have been engrained into our parenting skills repertoire. You can only do your best at any particular moment...and just keep trying to remind yourself to have some patience...and hopefully you'll eventually be able to train yourself better for the next time around.
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