Tips on teaching your child patience
Growing flowers or vegetables from seed can be so rewarding. Seeing all your effort result in something beautiful or edible can be thrilling, but it also takes patience. Learning how to wait is a hard task for younger children but a skill they need to exercise often, especially as they begin to mix with other children.
Love Monster's 'Plant a Seed Day' episode, is a great example of learning to be patient and whilst you鈥檙e watching, take advantage of pointing out some key points to your child. Here are some ideas:
听
1. Comments such as 鈥楲ove Monster is finding it hard to wait for his seeds, isn鈥檛 he? And then relating it to them personally 鈥榙o you find it hard to wait sometimes?鈥 This helps to encourage reflection and insight and also sets them up to notice when they might need help to be patient.听This episode is also a wonderful example of imagination, something young children are great at. Encourage their creativeness by pointing out that imagination has no limits 鈥淲ow! A hot chocolate flower! If you could grow anything what would you grow?鈥
2. Connect emotions to bodily feelings: notice when your child is struggling with patience and be curious about how it affects their body. You could say 鈥淚t seems like it鈥檚 hard for you to wait, what is happening inside your body?鈥 Help them observe if their legs are twitchy or they are jumpy like a jellybean. Connecting feelings and bodily responses helps children further understand their emotional experiences.
3. Tolerating impatience: When you notice your child is struggling, you can remind them of Love Monster finding it hard to wait for his seeds to grow and being frustrated that TFB鈥檚 seeds had grown quicker. Help them to manage this emotion by getting them to remember what happened in the end 鈥 Love Monster鈥檚 seeds grew too, and they were amazing. You can say 鈥淚 notice it鈥檚 hard to be patient at the moment, let鈥檚 think up some ideas to help you wait.鈥 You could try ideas like distraction, helpful thoughts such as 鈥業 can wait鈥 or 鈥業t won鈥檛 be long鈥 or make up little games to play whilst you wait together.
Go to 大象传媒 iPlayer to watch Love Monster's 'Plant a Seed Day' episode.
