How often have you reflected in retrospect on a situation and thought of how you could have done things differently? Pam Leo, author of “Connection Parenting“, calls this the gap. She says as parents, we are always in this gap, the gap between what we know, and what we actually put into practice. So by patience in the gap, i mean being patient and gentle with oneself on the learning path of parenting. We are all in this same boat.
Parallel to this, the title of this post has to do with being patient with ourselves and our children when we find ourselves in this gap, realtime. It is easy to think or feel that we must get our child out of his sad, angry, or frustrated mood as fast as possible. I know that’s often how i feel if my children are whiny, or acting up in public, or as i would prefer to say: showing negative emotions in public. People look at you in an annoyed or curious way, often to see what you are going to do. The pressure’s on! With this sense of urgency, we tend to react instead of acting, and we are then found in the above mentioned scenario of “i could have dealt with this differently” and possibly with regrets. We save ourselves and our children a lot of heartache if we take the time to clear our heads and be patient in this “gap” between knowing and doing. If needed, remove yourself and your children from the view of others for privacy. Raising your children and dealing with emotions is certainly not a show, and it clearly puts unneeded stress in an already potentially stressful situation if we feel like it is a “how-good-of-a-mommy-are-you” test. We can be patient with ourselves, breathe, and take the time to reflect – deciding what to do instead of reacting and then looking back thinking of what we feel we should have done. While being patient in this gap, we can tap into our knowledge so that we may consciously and calmly act from it.
