How do I encourage patience?

lizlemon77

My 3.5 year old is driving me insane.  Anytime she asks for anything she expects me to jump immediately.  I tell her "I will get that for you in 3 minutes." but obviously she doesn't know what three minutes means and she just keeps asking.  It's driving me crazy.  I try to praise her when she is patient but those moments are few and far between.

So, does anyone have any suggestions on things I can do to encourage her to be a little more patient?  Thanks.

DaiLyght

DS1 went through this phase recently. He was a little older but this is what seemed to help for me. If I was say washing dishes and he asked me for some juice, I would say, "What do you see that Mommy is doing right now?" washing dishes "That's right. That's means I'm a little busy right now, but as soon as I am done washing these last few dishes I will get you some juice, okay?" And then of course, I have to make sure that as soon as I'm done, I get the juice, like I said I would.

If he asks again before I'm done, then I remind him of the conversation we just had and ask him to tell me when I said I would get the juice. I tell him that if he's not patient to wait and asks again, then he won't get the juice.

It took about a month maybe, but now when he sees me doing something, instead of just asking for juice, he'll say "Mommy, when you're done washing the dishes, will you get me some juice please?" And everytime he does that, I praise him for being understanding.

It was an effort on my part too though because I had to make sure that as soon as I was done whatever it was that I got him what he asked for. Sometimes when I get busy, it's easy to just pass it off or forget, but I really had to hold up my end of it to help him understand that he would get what he asked for if he just waited for a minute or two.

joseysbride

GOOD QUESTION!  This is a huge thing for me, too.  Lately, I have just started to not get what she wants if she can't be patient.

If she asks for something, and I can't do it right away, I'll say, "When I finish xyz I will get it for you."  If she says, "okay," and waits patiently, she gets it.  If she goes into all-out whine and cry mode, I'll say, "Fine.  You don't get it at all now."

Of course, there is a huge, giant tantrum after that, which is a whole other problem, and she gets sent to her room until she calms down in that case.

 

Glendi2.0

This might totally not apply, but I thought I'd throw it out there... DD#2 is on the Autism Spectrum and receives lots of therapy for various behaviors, one of which is waiting... her therapists have encouraged her to developing her waiting skills by slowly building up her "tolerance"... so for example, they'll ask her, "Sylvie, do you want the book?" She'll say yes, and they say, "Okay, let's wait for 5 seconds!" And they quietly count to 5... at first she had a really hard time waiting (screaming, yelling), but she's gotten way better at it, and now we're up to 15 seconds (slowly counting) where she can calmly wait for something... so the way I'd revise this to apply to typical kids is just exposing them to waiting for short periods of time for things they don't desperately want various times throughout the day, so they get the "hang of it" during times that they're less "frantic", kwim?