Hey, Vicki. Here's one. Cammy writes, "Can you do a video on how to have more
patience with my toddler?" I've got some ideas. Do you? -Yeah. Let's talk about it.
-Cammy, we got your back. Stay calm. -Calm. That is the common thing. Let's talk about that. -We
can break that down into a tool. So, let's start with C in calm stands for care.
Meaning self-care. -This is so important with those toddlers. You know,
you got to sometimes just take a step back when you're starting to get
frustrated and impatient with your child. Make sure that they are safe and that
they're cared for. That they're in a good situation for a minute. And step aside. Do
whatever it takes. Take a bath. Do some reading. Go for a quick walk as long as
the child is safe, right? You're just going to get a moment to take care of
yourself. -One of the barriers that you'll come up against especially with toddlers
is that they require full-time supervision. -Right. -And that's where we
get stuck sometimes. But like you're saying, Vicki. Take whatever steps are
necessary to provide for the needs of that child. And it might mean that you
just... You have a neighbor or friend or a sister or someone nearby that you can
just at a moment's notice, you can say, "Hey, I need a mommy timeout."
Whatever you call it, okay? And this is for self-care. I guarantee that bringing
a more functional mom to the picture is good for your child. So, do whatever it
takes to to take care of yourself. And honestly, we can't expect our kids to
take care of us. -You know, that is one of the biggest things I think with
children. Sometimes we get stuck in that idea that "Can't they see I'm getting
frustrated? Why can't they change this?" They really can't. And so you
got to find a way to take care of yourself and take care of this situation.
You know, even if you can't leave the child, there might be some things. You
know, put them in a stroller, strap them in and then go for the walk. And that
might be enough to get your brain kind of cleared out. -If you can get your body
moving, that's good. You want to get the blood circulating.
You want to pay attention to some really basic things like your diet, your
exercise, your sleep. These are all important to keep you on board as a
momma. And hopefully we can help you out here on the channel too. Does this help?
When we have these conversations, I'm hoping that it does. Leave some comments
down below too about things that you're finding. Maybe tips and tricks. You know,
to share with the other moms who hit the page so that we can build a little
better with our toddlers. That's awesome. Continuing with our acronym. Calm, right?
Stay calm. A is next. The "A" stands for attitude. -Oh, that is such a buzzword. So,
tell me what do you mean by that. -It is. You know what? Our son, our second son
Adam is in flight school. He's learning how to fly airplanes. The word attitude
has special significance in the aviation world.
-It does. -Because it means the position of the plane relative to the ground or to
the horizon, okay? Sometimes we think of attitude is how we feel.
"I've just got a really bad attitude today." Grumpy about everything. Okay,
attitude is not how you feel. Attitude is your position toward what's going on in
your life. Your position. When you think of it as position it's a lot easier to
assume a positive position even if you're feeling grumpy. Even if you're not
feeling great. So, a positive position would be, "I love my life". Okay, that
doesn't necessarily reflect how you feel in the moment. But you're choosing that
position regardless of how you feel in this moment. Your attitude might be "This
is perfect for me and my family." Vicki, this can get hard. -It gets really
hard. -We have a friend whose little 3-year-old is going through cancer
treatment. okay? How could that be perfect?
-Right. It's so hard. -Yes. it's hard and it's important to notice that sometimes
we don't... We don't get to choose what's going on. I don't think that that little
three-year-olds parents thought, "Oh, what's sign-up for cancer treatments." No.
Who would ever do that. But that's what showed up for them in their life.
Now, attitude while you're experiencing the big difficulty of that
situation, you can still maintain a position "That this is perfect for our
family." -Or we can do hard things. -That might be why it's perfect. To
teach us or demonstrate that we can do hard things. To teach us that we are
unified in purpose as a family. To teach us that we will choose love no matter
what and even if. -Another thing about your attitude is you can remember that
your child is probably right on schedule. So, when you're getting frustrated with
their behavior, remember they're right on schedule.
They're probably behaving the way you would expect a toddler to behave. -Right.
Exactly. Attitude leads to L because L is about
laughs. -You know, this reminds me of a time we
had a toddler --our very first child was a toddler and he had been... He had... I can't
even remember what it was. It was some sort of a Sun. Do you remember this? And
he had taken a head ripped it all over the house. And it was had made kind of a
mess. You're like, "What are you doing?" And I was like, I just started kind of singing a
little song I knew about scattering sunshine.
You know... So, you just find some humor in the situation. Laugh as often as you can as a mom. -Honestly,
you're probably going to be in a position a lot of times where you got to
choose to either laugh or cry. -Yeah. -And you just come down on whichever side you
would prefer on that, okay? But I think there's a lot of really entertaining
things that in the moment don't feel so. Well, we had an experience just this
morning with one of our puppies having an accident all over the living room
floor. Not so funny in the moment. Right? But this
is the kind of stuff that seems a lot funnier later on. And every stage that
your kids go through especially the toddler stage and then maybe followed
second by the teenager stage, is just fraught with things that are hilarious
as long as it's not you. And so, if you can take you back up a little bit,
remember to laugh, lighten it up. This is going to help you to be a good mom or a
good dad as well. To be able to laugh at the situation and take something that
would normally be difficult or painful and find the funny. Which one of my
speaking colleagues Jeanne Robertson talks about this all the time.
Find the funny in everything that you look for. That's just a way to lighten it
up. -That leads us into the last letter of our acronym M. So, this is standing for
memories. Make memories. Take the situations and find a way to make a
memory out of it. And even maybe jot some things down that you can remember later
so that you can make a memory book or memory page about these special years
that actually go really really quickly. -They really do. Babies don't keep. -You
know, it's kind of joking when you first... We first read this title. I was like "Well,
the way to stay patient with this toddler is wait a few years. Then they
won't be a toddler." -Then you won't have a toddler anymore. -You have to be patient with the
next stage. But really, it goes so quickly. So, find a way to make some new memories.
And they can be poignant ones as well as funny ones. And educational
ones. -This is a key when you understand the dynamics of your family and how this
stage is not going to last forever. In fact, it's not even going to last very
long at all. Capture it where it is. And there's so many ways to do that now too.
You mentioned a few, Vicki. Taking pictures, jotting down notes. Making a
little memory book. Where did our kids go? Well, our kids turned into teenagers. And
our teenagers turned into young adults. And our young adults turned into parents.
And they're gone. They are gone. They no longer exist in this world. All
we have is our memories of that. And so, if you can capture that,
that's going to change your patience level with your toddler today. Cammy, I
hope we answered your question for you. You know, we just love being on your team.
You're positive parents, you're good parents. You're benevolent generous loving
parents. Who wouldn't love to be a part of that, don't we? -Yeah. -If we can help you
further, we would love to do that. Just click in the description down below.
There's a lot of different ways that you can interact with us and with our team.
We're just glad that you're here. Thank you.