Learning patience
My son of four was off sick the other day, so my normal day turned into a slow day of a four year old.
All the things that I would get done in the day took a back seat and I had to stop and tell myself to be thankful to spend the day with him.
He asked me to do thread the string game with him which was to thread four objects and tie them after. He wanted to take all of them off, I asked him are you sure because once he had done this he had to finish and knowing what he is like I knew he was going to get bored half way through, he assured me that he would not.
So needless to say we unthreaded all of them and where off to a good start, two thirds of the way through (which I was impressed that we made it that far) he starts to act silly and stopped paying attention and the adult in me was starting to lose patience with him. So I had to count to three in my head and not say I told you so and plod through.
As I have realised that if you shout and lose your cool you are showing him how to behave and he shuts down all together so it would be a loss all-in-all.
So I breathed in deep and continued with our game trying to not let him push my buttons as he acted silly, started lying down on the couch and trying to do it from there, putting the string in other holes, shew! I must tell you it took all my self control to not just do it myself.
Anyways in the end we finished it and when he saw his work that he had done he was so proud of himself, that it made it all worth it in the end.
