How many times have you faced a situation that you see a large crowd of people and turn around to go away? 

I have it regularly. There were liquidation sales at a golf shop, where I really wanted to have my shopping spree. Guess what, I was not the only one. However, when I saw the line of cars, desperately trying to find a parking spot in the neighborhood, I turned around and went home. Sales will be online somewhere. 

I don’t like waiting. No, let me rephrase – I actually genuinely hate waiting. I never make anyone wait for me, and I get really annoyed if someone or something doesn’t return that favor… But then again, for me, this is not the ”instant gratification” story. Not entirely. At the same time, I can perfectly work on something which will bring results far in the future (or maybe not even at all). This queue intolerance for me is the intolerance toward wasting time on apparently useless actions. 

For me queueing is a waste and good operations management principles are teaching us that waste needs to be eliminated… Now, what about patience? Patience is a virtue, as the saying goes. Does it apply to any patience though? Are there different types of patience? Is patience only about being able and willing to wait? Does patience stop being a virtue if it has no truly valuable goal? Is patience for the sake of patience even healthy? 

Coming back to the question in the title: so what about kids and patience? What is it exactly that we want to teach our kids, and is patience actually the right word for it?