A child in constant motion knocks over something you cherish. A preteen asks you—for the hundredth time—the question you've already answered with a firm no. You explode. As a final warning, you give yourself permission to resort to threats: "My patience has limits!" The moment threatens to spiral into crisis and tears.
Should we really set limits on patience? Isn't God's patience infinite toward us?
Don't confuse patience with permissiveness
Let's be clear: patience is not the same as permissiveness. Permissiveness must have clear boundaries.
Children need to test themselves against structure as they grow. Remember: a child's first relationship with the world is one of omnipotence. "I cry and the whole family springs into action to give me what I want!"
It's important to reassure a child in its early months that the world can meet its basic needs. But it's equally important—through rules and limits—to help the child abandon this illusion of omnipotence and learn to find its place in a world of relationships governed by law.
Read also: Holy Patience!
Parents who believe that raising a child means responding instantly to every need commit a grave mistake.
I meet countless preteens every day in my prevention work who have drifted into recidivist delinquency. Many suffer because they never encountered an adult capable of saying "No"—of setting a limit and holding it firm no matter how fiercely they resisted.
Being patient does not mean being permissive.
Children and adolescents need firmness. The whole art of education lies in helping them understand: "I say no because I love you. I wouldn't respect you if I gave in to your every whim."
Patience as a school of gentleness
"Not with blows, but with gentleness, you will make them your friends." These words were spoken by Christ—whom John Bosco recognized as the Good Shepherd—in a dream the boy had at age nine. In the dream, with characteristic force, he saw himself trying to establish order through violence among a gang of adolescents who were insulting and fighting each other.
"The charity and gentleness of Saint Francis de Sales will be my guide." This was the resolution Don Bosco made at the start of his priesthood. From this resolution came his educational approach. This is why we call his pedagogy "Salesian"—it flows entirely from gentleness and affection.
Throughout his apostolate, during that period of great tension between Catholics and Protestants, Francis de Sales placed himself as a student of Christ, meek and humble of heart.
Gentleness is courage without violence. It is strength without hardness, love without anger.
Anger is weakness. Poorly managed aggression is weakness. Violence is weakness. By contrast, gentleness is peaceful strength. It generates patience and meekness.
"Blessed are the gentle." You will discover that the child or adolescent who would have resisted fiercely against an attitude of condemnation and contempt will not long resist the quiet force of a look of loving gentleness. Gentleness is welcome, respect, openness.
Patience means accepting difference
Patience accounts for the reality of the other—a person fundamentally different from me. I must not react based only on my own emotions, but on behalf of the other's interests, accepted and respected in their difference. Impatience often reveals my difficulty in receiving the child or adolescent as they truly are—with their limits and weaknesses, yes, but also with their talents and gifts. Patience is a virtue always bound up with humility in the one who practices it.
Patience requires time
We live in an age of "everything now," of constant switching channels, of exaggerated credit, immersed in a culture that demands immediate results.
Education requires time. There are no recipes for instant success. Children and adolescents need time to grasp the necessity of rules, to accept frustration, to welcome difference.
Patience is the refusal to impose your rhythm on others. It is acceptance of the child's or adolescent's own pace of growth—a pace unique to each person. This is why patience is so fundamental a virtue in any educator: parent, teacher, or mentor.
Patience as a sign of faith, hope, and love
Patience matters so deeply to me because it rests on trust. "Without trust, education is impossible" (Don Bosco). To be patient is to tell a child: "I believe in you. I trust your capacity to grow, to understand the good reasons behind these boundaries."
To be patient is to carry hope. "I refuse to leave you trapped in your behavior today. I will not answer provocation with provocation, anger with anger, violence with violence. I want to break this terrible cycle because I know you are capable of change."
To be patient, finally, is to love. "I love you as you are—with your tantrums and your anger—not only as I wish you to be. I love you like this because this is how God loves you as his child."
When patience runs out
There is often a gulf between our desire to do right and our temperament. Worn down by a child's or adolescent's constant agitation, what do we do when impatience—fueled by fatigue and anxiety—takes hold and anger erupts?
First, as Saint Francis de Sales loved to say, there is no use in punishing yourself. "This anger, disgust, and rage we feel toward ourselves (for having been carried away) tends toward pride. It springs from self-love disturbed and troubled by our own imperfection."
We must accept ourselves as we are, with our limits and flaws.
What matters, once calm returns, is to speak with the child. The child can understand that we adults too have limits and that our anger, far from meaning we don't love them, should be understood as a sign of the care we bear them. We need to take time to talk in a way that prevents misunderstanding from building a wall between us.
J.M. Petitclerc, Salesian Father, 2007
From Ombres et Lumière, no. 155