I used to think patience was a personality trait, like being a morning person or having nice handwriting. Some people had it, like my mom who has spent years in NYC classrooms. Other people, like me, did not. I was the person refreshing the group chat 30 seconds after sending a text, the one who took a two-minute microwave timer personally. Then I started picking up shifts as a behavioral technician, and patience stopped being a trait. It became a job requirement.
The Job Nobody Explains Well
When people ask what I do, I say I work with kids in applied behavioral analysis (ABA), and I watch their faces trying to figure out whether that is therapy, babysitting, or something in between. The short version: I help kids build skills one small step at a time and I record what happens. A lot of it is waiting. Waiting for a response, waiting out a hard moment, waiting for a skill to click on the 40th try instead of the fourth. No one hands you patience on day one. What they hand you is a data sheet.
Behavior is a Message
The first thing the work rewired in me was how I read other people. In ABA, you are trained to ask what a behavior is doing for someone. Is it a way to get something, avoid something, or say something they can’t say yet? A meltdown is not a kid being “bad,” it is information. I did not expect that question to follow me home, but it absolutely did. The co-worker who snaps at me before her coffee. The stranger who shoves past me on the 3 train. Even me, on the days I get upset over something that was never really about the thing I am upset about. Somewhere along the way, I stopped asking, “Why is this person like this,” and started asking, “What is this person trying to tell me?”Â
Progress is Boring, And That’s The Point
It was not one big moment that changed me. It was a slow shift. Nobody on social media posts the session where nothing happened, but most growth looks exactly like that: the same task, the same prompt, the same small win you almost miss.
I once worked with a little boy who didn’t use words. He communicated by using his hands, pointing, and nodding, and when that didn’t work, crying. The hard part was that half the time, I didn’t know what he needed either. So we were both frustrated, just in different languages. We worked on it for a long time. Trial after trial, breakdown after breakdown, me guessing wrong and him making it very clear I had guessed wrong. Then one day, instead of falling apart, he walked over, took my hand, and led me to what he wanted. Another day, he just brought it to me. No tears. No guessing game. Just: here, this.Â
On paper, it was probably more than one data point. In person, it felt like the whole point. He had learned that if he came to me first, I would listen. And I had learned to wait long enough to understand him.
We live in an instant-everything generation. Same-day delivery, read receipts, a whole personality built on “I’m not good at waiting” (guilty). ABA taught me that the most important changes are almost invisible while they are happening. You only see them when you look back at the data. I have started applying that to myself. My LSAT practice scores, my running times, my writing. Not every day is a breakthrough. Most days are just a data point.Â
What Patience Actually Is
I used to think patience meant staying calm. Now, I think it means staying. Staying in the room when something is hard, staying consistent when you do not see results, staying curious when your first instinct is to get frustrated. I want to be honest that ABA is not a field without debate, and there are real conversations happening especially among kids with diagnosed Autism Spectrum Disorder, about how it should be practiced. I take those seriously. What I can speak to is what this work has taught me about slowing down and paying attention to people.Â
It is a side job. It was supposed to be a paycheck on top of my retail check. But it turned out to be the place where I finally learned what my mother seemed to know all along: patience is not something you have. It is something you practice, one small, boring, unglamorous try at a time.