How much impatience is "normal" for a toddler?
My son is 17-months-old, and I've read that over time, patience should increase not decrease. It seems that in the last few weeks, he's been less patient with certain activities than he used to be. For example, fitting farm animals in a puzzle. He's actually put all ten or so himself into the appropriate places, but recently, it seems like if he doesn't fit it in the first few tries, he starts getting really frustrated and then gives up.
I'm trying to figure out the cause for this... Is it that he's truly getting less patient? Is he reacting to us somehow -- are we unintentionally encouraging him to give up? Is this just a phase? Is this just normal?
I want to teach him to work through his frustration and to be more patient. But I'm not sure how hard to push -- at the risk that he'll just completely rebel if you push too hard. So I've been letting him walk away and then gently encouraging him to return after a little while, when he's not in his moment of frustration.
Any other suggestions? Thanks for any thoughts on this!
1 Answers
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From what you said, your son was more patient before and less patient now and you're wondering about the trend. My only unschooled suggestion is wait a little bit, all might yet change again. I noticed my daughter, around the same age, getting more eruptive with her emotions. She was normally almost always an easy-going kid, and then around 17 mos or so, suddenly, she would begin hitting, or crying, or whatnot. I too read it as frustration, a lot of times my take is that she's frustrated that we're not giving her what she wants / doing what she wants.
I think the power of beginning to communicate her wants - she has some words now, many more than the couple of signs we'd used before, plus the almighty power of "no!" :) - and seeing us respond and understand makes her desire even more control over little things that impact her day, control she didn't think of striving for before. Just like learning to walk has made her want to walk herself, push things, run, etc. So, I'm inclined to treat frustration as a temporary problem, one that I can help her learn to address by teaching her more words and how/when to use them.
This is not the same as the problem you wrote about but, from my interpretation, your response sounds just perfect. You could also try pointing him towards other toys/projects that teach the skill you're hoping he'll learn (here shapes & manipulation maybe), so that the next time he tries the puzzles he'll get some satisfaction just from being better at it.
