What do you say to children who are in a hurry? They want quick, short answers immediately and erupt when others in class ask “dumb” or time-wasting questions. They are not alone. The attention span of people in general, and children specifically, grows shorter and a need for instant gratification grows greater as the speed of life increases. Yet we know that the development of enduring learning takes time. Memory is a process that is strengthened with correct practice and timely repetitions. When we couple a child’s petulance with cultural quickening, the concept of time needed for teaching and learning is severely challenged. As an educator, sometimes the best reply to the need for speed is – be patient, let life unfold.
What do we know?
Teaching and learning are encapsulated in educational standards. There is a set of standards for every subject and age of child from birth through graduation in our public education system. National and professional organizations create documents of best practices for teacher preparation, daily instruction, and student learning outcomes. Course guides provide teachers with a template to assure teaching and learning stays within the markers of relevant standards. Standards are the curriculum.
We also know that the pace of school life today is quick. Our usual teaching model is to instruct, practice, assess and evaluate, re-instruct, if necessary, and move on to the next instruction. Everything is forward leaning. Hence, when we are faced with learning that requires time for consideration, analysis, evaluation, and synthesis, the time needed for learning can stretch the expected timetable. Adding the needed time to ensure all children successfully learn causes conflicts with the expected routine of teach and test. As a linear construct, teaching and learning are on a timetable. And it is a fast timetable of September to June.
Patience is not a standard.
Besides academic standards we also teach so-called “soft standards”. Soft standards, such as cooperation, collaboration, group processes, and role playing are stitched together with academic standards in our course guides. Patience, however, is not a designated student learning outcome. A search of curricular standards, the Common Core for example, will not disclose the learning goal of “patience”.
What is patience?
Patience is the ability to wait with an internal calm. Patience is a tolerance for waiting for uncertainty to be clarified. Patience implies that, given time and opportunity, things will change, and understanding will be developed. Our classic role model for a patient person is Job who tolerated multiple trials over time in the belief that God eventually would favor him and his lineage. Job-like patience requires a person to believe that things will work out as they should in the end.
Teachers are admonished to be patient with children. We have hints and tips about how to be patient with students but no curriculum for teaching a child to be patient. Patience is a soft skill that lies in the disposition of personal traits that we want all to have. We treat patience as an innate personal trait that matures but is not a taught and learned skill. Patience comes with patience!
The inverse of patience is impatience, and we more clearly understand patience by knowing what it is not. Consider the last time you were impatient. Impatience is stressful, causes anxiety, quickens the pulse, and raises blood pressure. Impatience demands immediacy. Impatience breeds anger. Patience is being calm and waiting in a traffic jam for cars to start moving; impatience is road rage.
Persistence is linked with patience. We often tell children “Try to do it again” in the belief that success comes with subsequent efforts. Corrective teaching assists children to find success in second and third attempts. We often use persistence to achieve learning outcomes without tying eventual success to learned patience.
Patience with what?
Patience always is within a context. We can assist children with three kinds of patience.
- Patience with self. Inherent in patience with self is the Greek maxim, “know thyself”. To know oneself is to be aware of inner feelings, strengths, and weaknesses, and of personal goals. Just as we adjust the thermostat in a room to regulate air temperature, acknowledging one’s inner self assists a person to regulate how they respond to situations in and not in their control. Self-knowledge clarifies that a particular action is or is not in a person’s best interest.
Patience with self assures that what a person does today is attuned with their immediate and future goals. A patient person does not act in the immediacy just to act but acts with the assurance that action is justified and aligned with intentions. Being patient and calm is an intellectual and emotional decision to be so. It is not easy but takes self-regulation to remain around the norms of being patient and calm.
- Patience with others. Patience with others also requires self-control. School-age children are constantly tugged by what they want for themselves and what others want of and for them. Self-control is the measure by which a child balances her own needs with needs impressed upon her by others. Like impatience, we better understand self-control by its inverse of being controlled and manipulated by others. It is impossible for a child who constantly reacts and responds to the needs and demands of others to be patient and calm with herself.
A patient child says, “Let’s wait and see” more frequently than “Giddy up; let’s go!”.
Personal relationships are critical for a child’s healthy development. Relationships start with family members and quickly include peers at school. The balance a child achieves in valuing daily interactions with parents and siblings and with school peers is essential for a calm and patient child. Minding and respecting parents is innate for young children. Getting along with siblings is a strong second in family life.
A child’s relationships with peers can be a jungle. Too often children create anxiety and stress over the words and actions of their peers. A child who overvalues peer relations struggles with self-control because self-worth is measured by peer acceptance. It is impossible for a child who is constantly measuring self-worth by their peers to be calm and patient. Impatience multiplies with the use of social media’s potential for instant response and constant engagement, but peers play the game of ghosting. Jungle may be too kind a metaphor.
Patience with others can be contagious but most often is met with impatience from others. A patient and self-regulating child understands.
- Patience with the world. Children chronically want to grow up faster than their years allow. They want not only a drivers license but a sporty car. They want to be on winning teams that do not spend a lot of time practicing. They want good grades with a minimum of studying. They see themselves as older than they are. Each of these statements illustrates a child’s relationship with the world. Childhood is impatient.
While children study and gain knowledge of geologic and pre-historic times, they do not conceive of the passage of time in months, years, decades, and centuries. Anything that happened before their birth was “long ago”.
Patience with the world requires a child to see the constant passage of time like watching a chemical reaction in a test tube. Some reactions are instantaneous, and others are very slow and take time. A patient child knows the difference and is comfortable knowing that change requires its own timetable.
Patience is not ambivalence.
Don’t wait for the sake of waiting. Being patient is not foregoing or losing track of personal goals. It is easy for the overly patient to be considered ambivalent. A healthy disposition contains a tension between patience and steady progress in goal attainment. Thomas Edison taught us that success is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. Success takes a consistent work effort and patient work keeps a child’s focus on the desired goals. Edison found that his patient, steady efforts produced his creativity.
Let life unfold.
Notwithstanding predestination and evolutionary theories, Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 tells us there is a time and a season for everything under the heavens. Patience and goal attainment let the world and life unfold before us. Unfolding is not an accident. Unfolding is not passive. It is shaped by doing what is within one’s control while waiting for what is not in one’s control to happen. Unfolding requires trust that reasonable goals will be attained. But unfolding takes time and comfort with time is patience.
The Big Duh!
Teaching patience per se is difficult. Modeling patience is easier. Teaching the cognitive skills required as steppingstones for goal achievement sneakily teaches children the value of patience and endurance. We can use class time to inspect and consider, to analyze and evaluate, and to synthesize what is known into personal understanding. When we act patiently and allow learning to unfold we demonstrate what it means to be patient – let life unfold.