Be Patient
Gregory K. Moffatt, Ph.D.
Patience is a virtue we've been told and every parent has had to remind their children to be patient. Wait for Christmas. Wait to open your birthday presents. Be patient waiting for your brother to get in the car. Summer is coming and school will be out very soon. You will be big enough to drive in just a few years. Be patient. Yet I think we forget sometimes that we need to be patient with our children, too. Be patient. They will grow up soon enough.
Be patient with the crying in the night, the dirty diapers, and the bottles. Before you know it they won't be interested in your need to cuddle and care for them. They will do things on their own and while you may sleep better, there will come a time when you will miss those days when you sat alone in a quiet, dark house rocking your little one. You will wonder when you blinked and missed so much, how the years past so quickly and how they grew up to be such wonderful, delightful people.
Be patient with them as they learn to control their tempers and their moods. It is frustrating to struggle with melt-downs in the grocery store, at church or on the soccer field. Just wait. There will be a time coming when you will want them to tell you what they are thinking and feeling, but they won't. They will learn to be like you - reserved and protective of your secrets. There will come a time when you will know they are hurt, upset, or worried and you will give almost anything to have them want to share it with you.
Smile when you hear for the tenth time in a single week, "Mom, I need money for…" Maybe it is $130 for a band uniform, or $300 for camp; $40 for instrument rental and $50 for new clothes to replace the ones they've outgrown. When they are grown and gone, you will have more money to spend on your own needs and wants, but then come grandchildren. You will look for ways to spend money on them and I am almost certain you will wonder why you didn't feel that way with your own children when they were little. The lost money will mean nothing to you compared to the joy that you see in their faces when they say, "Thanks, grandpa!"
Have patience as you teach them to put away their clothes, clean their rooms, and do their homework. While they may never be organized or neat, someday they will live someplace else. Their rooms at home will be neat and sterile - only shells filled with memories.
And while you are at it, enjoy the noise. Laughing, crying, arguing, asking questions, and talking - these are the noises that fill a household with children. At the end of a long work day it can be tiring to be met at the door with cacophony, but it won't always be that way. Long before they leave the house for good, they will have their own schedules and activities. You will come home to a quiet house because they are at baseball practice or dance lessons. They will be at friends' houses for overnight parties. Your house will be quiet - too quiet. The kind of quiet that makes you wonder if you missed something.
Be patient with them as they fail. Their forgetfulness or inability to perform various tasks is a part of their learning curve. You are their teacher. Take pleasure in watching them try as much as watching them succeed.
When your children are grown and gone, you will remember these earlier times much more fondly than you are experiencing them right now. The pains, frustrations, and irritations will easily be eclipsed by the joys that are sometimes hard to see when you are in the midst of it all.
Just as you tell your children to be patient - Christmas
will be here before know it. Be patient with them. The joys of
their maturity will be exciting and the freedom that comes with
an empty nest will have its advantages. But once they are gone,
you can't get those early years back.