This Parenting Hack Will Help You Be a More Patient Parent
Is there anything more exasperating than children? As much as I try to practice patience with my children, there are many nights where I feel like a failure because I lost my temper and became a scary, screaming banshee. One mom of a four-year-old was tired of being the “angry mom,” so she tried a parenting hack to change her behavior ”” and it worked.
Shauna Harvey’s four-year-old son is, as she described on Facebook, “oh so testy.” After finding another blogger’s technique for practicing patience, she decided to test it for herself. Harvey posted about her first day of using the hair tie technique on Facebook:
“I wore 5 rubber bands on my wrist from the time I got up, to the time I tucked him in just now. The 5 rubber bands represent every time you lose your cool or say something unkind to your child. Every time that happens, you move one band to the other wrist. To “gain the band back”, you must do 5 kind/positive things with your child (dance party, singing a song together, reading together, etc). I read that science shows for every bad reaction, it takes 5 POSITIVE reactions to regain a positive relationship.” SCIENCE! Who knew?
Harvey’s Facebook post has been shared more than 11,000 times.
Shauna described her frustration with her son and it’s oh-so relatable: “I’ve found myself so incredibly stressed out, I beat my head against the wall daily because I don’t understand why my 4 year old insists on being disrespectful and a non listener. I was to the point of crying at least every other day.” Little kids are so damn hard.
After finishing the day with all of the hair ties on the original wrist, Harvey was encouraged. “I’m going to be using this method until it becomes a habit and basically turns into an autopilot ritual.” She acknowledged that it had only been one day with the hair band technique, but was still proud of herself for exercising patience with her son. She also highly recommended others try this parenting hack:
“If you find yourself being that ‘Angry Mom,’ try this!”
(Image: Facebook / Shauna Harvey)
