The Patience You Lost This Morning Wasn't About Your Kid

Most days it starts small. He won't put his shoes on. He wants the other cup, not the one I handed him, and he wants it right now. My voice goes flat and short before I've even decided to raise it, and by the time we're out the door I've said "no" more times than I meant to, and none of it landed the way I wanted it to.

I used to think that was just what having two little boys does to a man. Some mornings it is. But most mornings, if I'm honest, the short fuse started before he ever tested it.

It Was Never About the Shoes

Not because he wouldn't put his shoes on. Because I walked into that moment already carrying something I hadn't put down. A message I hadn't answered. A thing from the day before that never got resolved. He just happened to be standing in front of me when it came out.

That's the part that's hard to admit. The kid isn't the trigger. He's just the first person close enough to catch what's already loaded.

Paul wrote a line to fathers that I used to read as a warning about being too harsh. I don't think that's all it's saying.

Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged. Colossians 3:21

Discouraged is a specific word. It's what happens when a kid can't tell the difference between real correction and just catching whatever mood you walked in with. He's not being asked to read your day. He's three. The asking is on you.

What Reflection Actually Does Here

Reflection doesn't make me a patient man by seven in the morning. What it does is slower and smaller than that. On the mornings I've actually sat with what's going on before the day starts, I catch the short fuse closer to the beginning of it instead of three "no's" in. Not because I willed myself calmer. Because I'd already named, on paper, what I was carrying in before he ever tested it.

If you want a daily practice that asks what you're actually bringing into the house before you snap at the people in it, Reflect is free to try for 7 days.

Still Learning the Difference

I'm not writing this because I've solved it. Most mornings still have some version of the shoes fight buried in them somewhere. But I'm learning to ask, before I raise my voice, whether the thing in front of me is actually the thing that's bothering me. Some days I catch it before it comes out. Some days I don't, and I have to own that later instead of pretending the morning didn't happen.

That's not becoming a more patient dad. That's becoming a more honest one, one morning at a time.

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Trent Jones is the author of the Forged Agents blog and builder of "Reflect", a daily reflection companion for living in the present, in peace, with joy.