Parenting tips: How to respond to an impatient or demanding kid

As children start to grow, they feel confused with the way they should express them when they feel overwhelmed. Hence, they start to show their frustrations and become demanding. Impatience is also a way for a child to portray their frustrations. However, as parents, we should learn to jump at the right moment to teach them that whatever they need cannot be given to them just because they are demanding for it. “Phewwww. It’s triggering when our kids get demanding! Here’s how to respond in the moment so you and your child feel empowered and more connected,” wrote Psychologist Jazmine McCoy as she shared tips for parents as to how to respond when the kid starts to become impatient or demanding.

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Narrate what you hear them communicating: More so than ever, a child wants to voice their demands when they start to become impatient. They also want to feel seen and heard. In such cases, we should narrate that we can understand what they are trying to communicate.

Establish boundary: When they start to get impatient with what they are doing and want to jump to something else, we should establish a clear boundary and make them understand that things will take time to happen, and they should learn to be patient.

Articulating needs: When the child voices his/her demands, we should ask them to tell the same thing with a better choice of words so that they learn to have healthier expression of their emotions and their demands.

Coaching them: As we learn to coach them to become better versions of themselves, they also start to be conscious of the way they feel. They start to understand their actions and their demands and find better ways to express them to us.

Not ignoring them: We should learn the skill to listen to the child and understand them – this is a very important thing for a parent to do.