I've been up all night. My little guy didn't sleep very well, and of course I couldn't sleep after the 4th time he got up. Being me, I had to review the day's events over and over. It didn't start very well and it only ended ok. Well it barely ended ok as I've only slept for about 3 hours and it wasn't even a solid hours. I started thinking about raising small humans and the endless patience we need for that job.
I've never been able to hide my impatience with people particularly well. If someone is insulting, pushes too hard, persists on a subject I consider dropped, I just get impatient. It has taken me YEARS to work on my ability to control my impatience and temper. If I ever wanted to make it in customer service I had to. I remember my first review. The manager said I had to control my facial expressions because apparently if someone ticked me off it immediately showed. So I spent the next 6 months learning that control. It helped at school too lol. I was a moody teenage girl being told to control my emotions. Yeah that was fun. I did it though and went on to various jobs without issues. I wasn't crazy. I wasn't violent. I just didn't have any patience.
Then when I turned 30 I got a job working for TSA. If anything can break a person and push their patience to the breaking point it is being an officer with this agency. In one airport it was passengers. Oh the stories I could tell you. In the other airport it was the coworkers and upper management (not all mind you, there are some great people there). I remember reading an article about combat veterans who lived through several deployments only to be broken by the very same people they put their life on the line for when they came home and worked at an airport. Patience was something officers fought for every day. Patience and understanding.
Two years into this insane job I had a baby and transferred airports. Becoming a parent is one of the best and most frustrating things possible. You wanna talk about testing patience?! Take care of a tiny narcissistic dictator that can't take care of themselves while getting up at 2am to go to work every morning. My patience tank was basically empty by the time I got home.
Then I had another one. As they both grew it became a battle of wills. Parents vs. kids. We battled over them doing things we didn't want them to and them not doing things we did want them too. Yelling, time outs, anger, frustration was had on all sides. When I was pregnant with my 3rd child last year I knew there had to be another way. I couldn't constantly battle the two while pregnant or holding a tiny baby. I started looking for other ways. I joined a gentle parenting group, which made my eyebrows raise in incredulity more often than not. I read parenting books one after another.
Last summer I went to my sister-by-choice's house and she has this 1-2-3 rule. Yes we all do the count of 3 hoping our children will listen and we won't have to dole out consequences, but how often do we follow through? After venting my frustration she told me that she hadn't just come up with it. She read a book. All I could think was greeaaaatttt, another self-help book. So I read 1-2-3 Magic by Thomas Phelan and the count to 3 finally made sense. I started implementing it and it has started to work. It has been so much better.
That doesn't mean I'm always good at holding my patience in. My Mommy Tantrums have decreased significantly, but then I wonder if I'm doing enough. Yesterday I was annoyed with my husband through most of the day. Already being grumpy, the things my kids did to annoy me seemed worse. Then we went to a birthday party, and my oldest somehow resurrected her shyness. That wouldn't have been a problem if I hadn't nearly tripped over her at least 3 times in a 10 minute period while holding my infant because she kept trying to hide behind me instead of playing with her friends. I finally gave up trying to get her to play and just told her to stay next to me, not up my butt. She apparently thought this was funny and eventually she went off to play.
The 2.5 year old was great for the first nearly 2 hours. Then the sugar and exhaustion set in. She almost fell off a stool she wasn't supposed to be on, and had multiple meltdowns over the next half-hour. When the little one melts down you would think she was being chased and eaten by rabid wild animals. The more I tried to quiet her the louder she got. Instead of being patient and kind I told her the behavior was not acceptable. I mean, really. I told a toddler in full nuclear meltdown that I wouldn't tolerate her behavior. Yup that made the whole thing better. She stopped instantly and apologized....just kidding. She screamed louder.
So instead of being empathetic I lost patience and made them leave. The party had been officially over for at least 30 minutes, but my oldest was still happily playing with the children still there. So here I am, at a friends house with with my 3 children, passing my infant off to various friends to deal with each episode. I hit my breaking point and instead of behaving with grace I had a tantrum of my own and left with the kids. Fiona was mad the whole way home, and Saoirse so angry with me for making her leave (despite melting down every 30 seconds) she wanted Daddy to put her to bed. Daddy is usually who she goes to when she wants to play, and sometimes when she's sad, but I nearly always put her to bed. Nope. She wasn't having it. Though she did fall asleep right away. Fiona went to bed and The baby...well he took 2 hours to get down then was up every 45 minutes after a 3 hour "nap". Eventually I just couldn't sleep and cringed my way through the day's events.
All I could think is that if I'd just had more patience the day could have gone differently. The thing is, patience is learned. You will never have it fully mastered, but you have control over your own grownup tantrums whether it is with a spouse, work, kids or all of it. The goal is to take a deep breath and practice that patience as often as possible. If you deal with little humans like I do, it becomes a daily mantra. You have to breathe and remind yourself why you love it so much. It's never really as bad as it seems in the moment. Your babies will forgive you and maybe like mine come for a snuggle at 5am. All you can do is try again the next day and then the next until it once again becomes your norm.
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