Sneak peek: What’s the key for how to be a patient parent? Most of us have tried the tactic of “counting to ten” to calm down. However, the key ingredient is a more mindful approach.
If you look up books on how to be a patient parent or Google it, I would guess that at least 80% of them include a strategy, something along the lines of, “Go to another room and count to 10 to calm down.”
Has this ever worked for you?
When you are upset at your child, do you have the forethought to stop and count to 10?
I think for many of us, the answer is “no.” When we are upset enough to yell at our kids, with the stress hormones pumping through our veins, most of us do not have the self-control to just leave the situation and count to 10.
So what do we do instead?
Key Takeaway
The key to becoming a more patient parent isn’t counting to ten. The key is separating your child’s behavior from the situational context, having age-appropriate expectations, and recognizing behavior as communication.
How to be a Patient Parent (in real life)
After reflecting on my own impatient behavior with my kids and reading some research on the topic, I’ve come to a realization: learning to separate your child’s behavior from the context of the situation is half the battle in learning to become more patient.
Let me explain with an example:
Say you slept through your alarm one morning, and you are late getting your kids ready for school. You’re rushing around trying to get breakfast ready, teeth brushed, and your kids dressed for school. You’re worried they will be tardy or you’re also sort of embarrassed that you slept late on a school day.
As you’re rushing around, you hear your kindergartener wail and realize they’ve just spilled their milk all over the dining table. You rush over and yell at them because “They’re too old for this” or “They know better than to put his cup at the edge of the table.” This causes them to start crying, and the situation just goes downhill from there.
Let’s look at this situation with a little self-reflection: were you really mad about the spilled milk or was that just the “straw that broke the camel’s back” in the midst of an already stressful morning?
Most likely, it’s the latter. On another day, when you were not running late, spilled milk would (literally) be nothing to cry over.
Related reading: The Scientific Reason Why Yelling at Your Kids Doesn’t Work
This is an obvious example, but think back to the last time you yelled or were impatient with your children. Was it their behavior or the context of the situation that set you off? I think in many cases, other stressors are at play that contribute to us losing our patience with our children. Deep down, many of us know this.
What the Research Actually Says
Stress changes how you see your child’s behavior — not just how you react to it
It’s not only that stress makes parents more reactive, it can also change how parents interpret their child’s behavior in the first place. Parents under heightened stress are more likely to view their child’s behavior as problematic, and negative assumptions about why a child is acting out have been shown to mediate the link between parental stress and harsh or reactive parenting. In other words, the milk spill isn’t just harder to tolerate on a stressful morning — a stressed brain is more likely to read it as defiance in the first place, rather than an accident.
Mindfulness-based training measurably reduces parental reactivity
This isn’t just a nice idea — it’s been tested directly. The most extensively studied program is Mindful Parenting, developed by Dr. Susan Bögels, an eight-week training built on mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and adapted specifically for the parenting context, with modules covering automatic-pilot parenting and parental self-compassion.
Across the research, the strongest supported mechanism behind why the program works is that it reduces parental stress and reactivity under stress. A 2019 systematic review and meta-analysis reinforces this at scale: across 25 independent studies, mindfulness training for parents produced a measurable post-intervention drop in parenting stress that grew stronger by the two-month follow-up.
Parenting stress and difficult child behavior feed each other
This also helps explain why the “spilled milk” moment can spiral. Parents under chronic stress are more likely to react to their children with anger and struggle to manage competing household demands, and a stressful or hostile family environment can, in turn, worsen children’s own emotional and behavioral difficulties — which then feeds back into more parental stress. It’s a loop, not a one-way street, which is exactly why addressing your own context (sleep, workload, timing) is as important as addressing the child’s behavior in the moment.
How do you fix this issue so you can be a patient parent?
I think in many cases, how to be a more patient parent involves just reflecting on past situations, which can give us the answer. Do we need to plan more or allow more time to get ready for an event? Do we need to avoid a potentially stressful situation altogether (sometimes that’s not possible)? Are we stressed because we aren’t getting enough sleep, healthy food or exercise?
Related reading: Research Reveals the Real Reason Why You’re Losing Your Temper with Your Toddler
Here’s a video I made recently explaining more about this issue of context:
Related reading: Research-Backed Parenting Goals
3 Root Causes of Parental Impatience (and How to Fix Them)
One of the hallmarks of positive parenting (which this blog focuses on) is looking at children’s behavior as communication. Children’s behavior usually has an underlying cause or motivating factor. For example, your child may appear disrespectful or angry, but underlying that may be an unmet need, feelings of anxiety, or that they simply haven’t developed the skills needed to handle the situation.
This is another area where mindfulness comes in handy. Think back to the last time your child’s behavior triggered your impatience or anger. What was the behavior? What may have been the underlying cause?
When I reflected on these issues, I discovered several common issues that I think many parents experience with their children’s behavior:
1. Unrealistic developmental expectations
Expectations are often overlooked when we think about how to be a patient parent. Having reasonable expectations for children’s behavior is another key to patient parenting. This simply means we oftentimes expect our kids to act in ways for which they are not developmentally ready. For example, expecting a 2-year-old to sit quietly and calmly while you wait in a waiting room for an appointment is not really reasonable. If we go into a situation with an unrealistic expectation of our child, then we will most likely be disappointed and possibly lose our patience.
This graphic is just one example of how understanding developmentally appropriate expectations can have a huge impact on our parenting:
That’s one of the main reasons I started this blog—by having age-appropriate expectations of our kids, we are less likely to be impatient and disappointed in their behavior.
You may also enjoy: Social-Emotional Development: The Ultimate Guide for Parents
2. Perceived attitudes that trigger you
Are there certain attitudes, like disrespect or ungratefulness, that trigger you more than others? For me, it’s ungratefulness. If I feel my kids are being ungrateful for something (or experience) that they’ve been given, it will trigger impatience in me more than almost anything else.
What is that trigger for you? Just a hint: many times what appears as the “trigger attitude” to us is many times not what the child is actually expressing. In other words, it’s our trigger because we are hypersensitive to it. Again, what looks like disrespect or ungratefulness to us may just be fatigue, grumpiness or some other issue that the child is experiencing (see the video above for more details).
3. Temperamental mismatches
Sometimes our child’s temperamental needs can set us off for being less than patient because their needs are so different from ours. If you are more introverted and your child is more extroverted, his need for a lot of social engagement might make you lose your patience because you do not have that need. I explain a good example of this in the video above. Temperamental differences (or similarities in some cases) are often a trigger point between kids and parents.
Frequently Asked Questions
Usually it’s not always about your child’s behavior. It can also be stress, fatigue, or an unrelated frustration that’s already built up. The behavior is just the final trigger.
If you’re frequently frustrated by the same behavior — like a toddler struggling to sit still — it may be a developmentally normal limitation, not defiance.
Yes. Traits like introversion/extroversion or high energy can clash with your own temperament, making certain behaviors harder for you to tolerate even when they’re normal for your child.
But Wait…
I know what you’re thinking…sometimes my child is disrespectful or ungrateful or misbehaves in some other way. I hear you, parents! I’m not saying that kids never misbehave and that there is always some underlying explainable reason. Kids are kids; their brains are still developing and they make mistakes.
However, if you can use this mindful parenting approach to help understand the other factors or underlying issues that are at play in many cases, then that only leaves you with the times when kids do make mistakes.
When kids do make a mistake or make a bad choice, you will have built up such a strong connection and understanding of their behavior that you can respond more patiently and work through the issue in a way that they can learn from it.
Want help learning how to be a patient parent? Download this Mindful Parenting Worksheet by clicking on the image.
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