Today I’ve been a little bit tired and cranky. That’s got me thinking about patience and how I wish I had some. Children require patience, and since I live with a child, I could really use a bit right now.

I’m reminded of a story once told to me by another mom. Her son (who was about 3 years old at the time) had been given a set of plastic army men. She was not too thrilled about this gift, but she didn’t want to make an issue out of it. She figured that confiscation would only make the toys more desirable, so she ignored them. Or so it appeared. But each time her son would spread his troops around the living room, a few of the men would be lost in battle. See, when he wasn’t looking she would take just one soldier and quickly toss it behind the desk or couch until, after several weeks, the army was completely disbanded.

At the beginning of first grade a similar strategy was used on my own daughter. She’d discovered that by sulking in the corner of the classroom, she could bring her classmates to her. They would come over to console her and ask what was wrong. So she started doing it every day and came to think of the corner as “hers.” The teacher’s assistant saw through the ploy, and so she began moving a bookshelf a little farther into that corner each day until there was no more corner to cry in. And that was the end of that. (Thank you, Jan!)

I also know a dad who, not wanting his child’s health ruined by sugar, makes the ultimate sacrifice each year after Halloween. When everyone else is asleep, he sneaks into the kitchen and eats a carefully measured amount of his kid’s trick-or-treat booty. He does this willingly, night after night, until there is so little left that he wouldn’t be detected (or until all the good stuff is gone).