Patience Worksheets: Printables to Teach Kids Waiting and Self-Control

Most times, kids want what they want, and they want it now. But this instant gratification can hurt your child in more ways than you anticipate. Through patience worksheets, you can teach your child the value of temporary pauses and how these lead to long-term successes in school and in their relationships.

This helpful guide explains why patience is such an important tool for self-regulation and provides three helpful handouts for teaching your child the value of patience.

Why Teaching Patience Matters for Kids

Being patient isn’t just about being well-mannered. Tolerating delay allows children to self-regulate and become emotionally resilient.

According to the Harvard University Center on the Developing Child, developing executive functions early (including patience) actively strengthens the prefrontal cortex, which improves executive functioning and impulse control [*].

Patience also directly impacts how children learn. Patient children are better at solving complex problems because of higher frustration tolerance and greater cognitive flexibility [*]. They can pause and pivot to new strategies if needed.

In peer settings, patience helps children negotiate, share resources, and wait for their turn.

Active listening is an aspect of patience that makes children better communicators. Children who practice patience are also more empathetic and can understand why their friends may react to them in certain ways [*].

Printable Patience Worksheets

Patience takes practice! Help your child develop good patience-centric habits with our printable patience worksheets below.

My Patience Journey Worksheet

Our “My Patience Journey” collection is a therapeutic tool for turning the abstract concept of patience into something tangible and actionable for kids. It’s all about self-reflection, with a focus on introspection, role modeling, and action planning.

The “My Patience Journey” page asks children to look back on times when they were impatient and reflect on how it made them feel. It then asks them to identify specific moments in which they demonstrated patience and think of positive role models for good behaviors.

For example, your child might choose their grandmother as a role model. Encourage them to explain why. Maybe Grandma is very patient with her rowdy grandchildren or good at meticulous activities like origami.

This worksheet also improves somatic awareness by helping children identify how impatience feels in the body. Prompt your child by asking them what their body does when they’re feeling impatient. Maybe their stomach feels like it’s tied in a knot. Perhaps their hands start to sweat.

When your child learns to recognize the signs of impatience, you can use this worksheet to create a plan. Using the patience toolbox, parents can help children choose three immediate, quick, and concrete things they can do when feeling triggered. For example, they can put their hands in their pockets, take a deep breath, and repeat an affirming mantra until they calm down.

Practicing Patience Worksheet

Our Practicing Patience worksheet helps build situational awareness for children by outlining common everyday scenarios in which they may have to practice patience. For example, this might include having to wait their turn, experiencing a setback, or getting into an argument with a friend or family member.

Part two of the worksheet helps children reflect on how impatience might manifest under certain circumstances and asks them to brainstorm practical strategies to handle these calmly. For example, if your child struggles with patience during conversations, you can use this worksheet to:

• Explain what impatience looks like in this scenario (interrupting or tugging on the other person talking)
• Figure out a “patience strategy” (raising a hand to indicate that they’re struggling to pay attention)

This worksheet doesn’t suppress behaviors (for example, by asking a child to just sit still and wait) and instead offers helpful and respectful alternative behaviors (such as breathing exercises).

BONUS: All About Patience Handout

The All About Patience handout provides a comprehensive overview of what patience is, what its benefits are, and how to improve it.

It offers an ideal way to introduce the concept of patience to kids for the first time, as it links patience to physical and mental health. It explains why patience is a positive virtue by outlining how it affects sleep, mood, and physical well-being. It also normalizes the process of habit-building by encouraging them to identify triggers and experiment with helpful skills.

You can use our worksheet as a way to help children reflect. For example, you can ask open-ended questions to explain parts of the worksheet: “What do you think happens inside our bodies when we’re feeling impatient?” “Why do you think it’s important to stay calm, even when it’s hard to wait?”

Another way to use our worksheet is to create patience games and activities. For instance, you can try mindful turn-taking while playing a board game or integrate patience into activities like baking.

Practice Patience One Small Step at a Time

Patience isn’t an inherited trait. It’s a valuable skill that requires practice in your child’s everyday life. Our worksheets provide real-world strategies to help your child transform impatience into the gracious ability to be confidently calm.

Sources:

1. “Building the Brain’s “Air Traffic Control” System: How Early Experiences Shape the Development of Executive Function.” National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2011.
2. Nakhostin-Khayyat M, Borjali M, Zeinali M, Fardi D, Montazeri A. “The relationship between self-regulation, cognitive flexibility, and resilience among students: a structural equation modeling.” BMC Psychology, 2024.
3. Smith-Flores AS, Bonamy GJ, Powell LJ. “Children’s Reasoning About Empathy and Social Relationships.” Open Mind, 2023.