the art of waiting

i recently read a post about a magical parenting word:  wait.  the entry is from janet lansbury's blog, she is a former actress/model and current RIE educator, basically a parenting educator.  i became excited immediately while reading the post, as it so perfectly explained how i feel about a child's ability to learn and develop without parents inadvertently hindering that progress.  i think about this a lot, because in my faith, the Bahai Faith, we learn that parents should accustom their children to hardship.  not in a hardcore, neglectful, extreme way, but in a manner such that they grow to realize their potential and capacities.  here is a quote from the writings:
"While the children are yet in their infancy feed them from the breast of heavenly grace, foster them in the cradle of all excellence, rear them in the embrace of bounty. Give them the advantage of every useful kind of knowledge. Let them share in every new and rare and wondrous craft and art. Bring them up to strive, and accustom them to hardship."
because nothing in our faith is extreme, this concept of accustoming the children to hardship can be put into action in ways that are commensurate with the child's capabilities.  an example that comes to mind would be something like making the child wait until you are off the phone to tell you something rather than interrupt your conversation and expect attention right at that moment.  ever since i declared myself a Bahai and i read about the training and educating of children, i have thought about how this idea can be manifested in our day to day lives in a practical way.  and that's part of the reason i was so attracted to this post by Janet Lansbury, AND so drawn to the book "Bringing up Bebe" by Pamela Druckerman.  There are many examples in Bringing up Bebe that illustrate how French parents teach their children to be patient.  in one of the chapters of the book, Druckerman is speaking with Walter Mischel who was a professor of psychology at Columbia University and is known for his marshmallow test in the late 60's, an experiment that tests childrens' patience and ability to control themselves.  anyway, he states that children that are able to delay gratification or to learn to be patient by distracting themselves are better at reasoning and concentrating and they "do not tend to go to pieces under stress".  it is shown that by learning patience, children become calmer and more resilient, they can "fully absorb" experiences.  Druckman also sites from the book A Happy Child, "the best way to make a child happy is to frustrate him" and explains that this is not accomplished through neglect, or preventing them to play but that "the child must learn from a very young age that he's not alone in the world and that there's a time for everything".  what i took from this chapter in the book is that you can't give into the child as a parent, you can't let them have everything they want all the time.  we must teach the children to wait so that they know that they are not the center of the world, that they are the "all-powerful".  and by doing this, the children grow up to be well behaved and then become adults that are able to cope with stress, rejection, disappointment, and all the other not so fun things that we have to deal with as adults, and in the teenage years for that matter.  so anyway there is the concept of helping children to learn to wait, which can be a practical tool to "accustom children to hardship", the hardship being that they must not get everything and anything they want whenever they want.  but then there is also the "wait" that parents must learn, and this is covered in Janet Lansbury's post.  apparently she follows the style of Magda Gerber, who was a famous early childhood educator.  a little blurb on Lansbury's blog abut Gerber that i really liked: "This word [wait] reflects a core belief in baby's natural abilities, respects his unique developmental time table, fulfills his need to experience mastery, be a creative problem solver and to express feelings (even those that are hard for us to witness)."  but here the focus is on the parent learning to wait in order to give the child a chance to develop his unique faculties.  i won't put the entire list here because you can just click on the hyperlink at the top of this post to read it yourself, but i will just highlight and summarize some of the points that resonated with me the most.
wait:
-for development: of the child's skills such as motor and language skills...basically let baby figure things out on their own timeline rather than that of the parent's, they will "own their achievement completely" and build self confidence
-before interrupting: give babies a chance to finish what they were doing...if parents avoid interrupting baby when he is say staring at the lamp, they develop longer attention spans, is encouraged to keep thinking and to trust his instincts
-for problem solving:  wait to see what a child is capable of figuring out by themselves...if baby is struggling to pick up a toy, don't just pick it up and hand it to her, comfort baby with your words and allow her to practice, don't fix the situation right away.  this encourages baby to try over and over rather than believing that they are unable to do it and expect others to do it for them
-for discovery: learn to wait and allow the child to find new things out on their own, like finding a new toy on the floor
-and observe:  see what the child is up to first...baby might appear to be reaching for a toy but they are content to just stretch
-for a better understanding: of what they need when they cry...we don't necessarily need to rush in and quell their cries, we might project what we think they need...or sometimes they just want to cry
-for feelings to be expressed:  give them time to fully process their feelings
-for ideas:  give children a chance to think about how to solve a problem for example, before jumping in with a solution

i liked the ones listed above, but the few that really struck me and reminded me of what i want to do with Z is to wait for development---this one is big for me because i'm just so excited for him to crawl and walk and eat food and all that.  so i have to remind myself a lot that they are babies for such a short period of time, a year out of their entire lifespan, that i should really just enjoy this stage with him now before it's gone.  the next one is waiting for a better understanding---my first instinct is to go to my baby the second he starts to cry to find out what's wrong.  part of the french parenting style is to wait a moment to see if baby can figure it out on their own and to give the parent a few moments to assess if baby is really in distress or needs something right away.  of course, there is balance to this.  obviously i am not going to let my baby cry if he needs food or to be changed or is hurt, etc.  the third concept is wait for ideas.  an example given is if the child is bored, encourage them verbally, Lansbury suggests saying, "It's hard to know what to do sometimes, but you are creative, I know you'll think of something."  and after that the child usually will figure out something to do.  it teaches them that they are creative, they can think through a situation, they can bear frustration and struggle and "boredom is just the time and space between ideas".  i really like these ideas and it seems to me that this kind of parenting would enable and empower children to trust themselves to think through problems and put their ideas into action, and that their parents trust them to do these things, too.  i'll probably revisit this subject in the future, because it's a good reminder to myself and it would be good to think about how to take the concept of waiting (for parent and child) and put it into day to day action.  otherwise, i can easily see myself falling into a routine of reacting without thinking about the situation as an opportunity for Z to think critically and problem solve or as a moment to enjoy.  oh, and i want to put this out there, i'm not really limiting myself to just one or two parenting styles, i like to read lots of different theories and suggestions and take what i think will work for me and my family and discard the rest.  so, what do you guys think?  do you have an opinion on this type of parenting or do you have any of your own experience with this---negative or positive?