Ok, so on to patience...or lack- there-of! DH is NOT a patient person, I don't think he ever was, and his coping skills are horrible when he is frustrated. I know for a fact as a kid, he would get flustered, start to tantrum and break things, bite people, etc - and his parents would jump in to fix everything for him rather than help him to help himself.
So my problem is, DD, much to my horror, tends to lean towards those behaviors - biting and all. On weekends or long stretches of time with me, she is super managable, incredibly independent, and she problem solves quite well. During the week I work 4 hours a day and my FIL watches her at our house. The first sign of a struggle and he jumps in to "save" her - for example, Sunday night they stopped by while we were finishing dinner. DD tossed her fork to the floor and told me 'all done', and so I asked her to wait for me to finish. Well in rushed FIL saying "oh, you dropped your fork, that's ok, papa do" as he proceeded to load it up and shovel food into her mouth. She's 17mos, and I'm sorry but she's been fully capable for self feeding from 8mos old, so I kind of wigged out! My IL's drive me nuts bc I see all the hard work I do trying to raise a self aware, confident, independent kiddo going straight out the window. Super frustrating for me, and more so for DD bc I see her starting to fall behind at times always asking for someone else to do things for her. I was so flustered when they left Sunday that after DD went to sleep I was in her room re-arranging her toys and books and putting things in baskets and gathering up the excess stuffed critters to donate since she's already acquired more than she knows what to do with.
Right now she's in ISR classes and 3wks in she still cries for me during lessons, but I'm totally capable of pulling of a poker face (being a dog trainer is a great background for that!) and she's been doing well in the water and I've noticed that outside the water she's een taking more risks, something I associate with the confidence boost of learning something new. But I do wonder if my FIL wasn't waiting on her hand and foot in between if she'd cry less or be more advanced in the lesssons. Sorry, that diverted a bit from our original topic! Anywho, clearly our biggest hurdle is teaching gentle behaviors and patience when learning new things. I know the style overall is suposed to lead to gentle kids but I find myself wondring when we will get there!