The No-nonsense Guide To The Art Of Patience

When you’ve got a young family, you can never have enough. Here’s how to top up your levels…

- Hattie Garlick

Patience and parents: these two words share an astonishing five letters. A coincidence? We don’t think so! Now, we know that your patience skills are probably already bordering on the superhuman– you’re a mum, after all. But we haven’t met a mum yet who doesn’t feel she could do with just a little bit more. And guess what? It’s possible! “There’s a growing body of research from neuroscience and social psychology that gives us insights into how to cultivate patience,” says psychologist Dr Christopher Willard. “Patience is really like a muscle in the brain. And, just like a muscle, your patience can be weakened by factors such as sleep deprivation.” Sound familiar? But there’s good news, too: “Again, like muscle, we are likely wired to have a certain amount of patience,” says Christopher. “But this can change a lot, depending on how much we “work out” our patience muscle to build it up and make it stronger and longer lasting.”

Give yourself a break

Whether it’s nappy changing or night feeds, being a mum involves speeding up the learning curve to master lots of new tasks you’ve never encountered before. “And the fact that you’ve never practised these tasks before means you have yet to build your “patience muscle” for them,” says Christopher. Those everyday jobs never stay the same for long either – changing an independent toddler’s nappy is a whole different ball game to a newborn’s! – so it’s tricky for your patience muscle to keep up with the pace of change.

So, give yourself a break if you feel you don’t currently have quite as much patience as you’d like. It’s normal – and we’re going to show you some smart ways to strengthen that patience muscle right now.

Use your imagination