Tonight I am grateful to the patience that I have garnered over thirteen years of teaching and a lifetime of struggle.
It was this storehouse of patience that allowed me to give our daughter the time she needed to calm down from a temper tantrum to end all temper tantrums. This was a knock-down, drag-out, floor-pounding event of epic proportions, centered upon Clara’s desire to wear her baby piggy shirt to bed even though it was covered in maple syrup.
It took her quite a while to finally calm herself, and a younger, less experienced version of myself would have tried to soothe her myself or pick her up and demand she finish getting ready for bed.
Instead, I allowed her to sit on the floor until she was ready to move past the tantrum on her own. As a result, our evening ended on a high note, with the reading of a book and a discussion about Clara’s pie-in-the-sky plans for her coming sibling.
Patience.
A precious commodity that I thankfully possess in great quantities. That is what I am most grateful for this evening.
