I was joking with a friend today, telling her that the one thing I really need in life right now is something no one makes. With all the scientists in all the laboratories in all of the world, why hasn't anyone come up with a treatment for parental impatience?

Parental impatience, as I define it, is that feeling that comes over you 15 minutes after you first asked your children to get their shoes on, and after ten more requests, they have yet to make a move towards the door. Parental impatience sneaks up on you when you are asking your child to turn off the hose for the third time, yet he continues to stand there, flooding the yard and soaking his little brother's shoes in the process. Parental impatience bubbles up inside you when you are trying to have a business conversation with the plumber and your 4-year-old opens the front door and coaxes your toddler outside to run in the street—even as you are gritting your teeth and giving the preverbial "don't you dare" hairy eyeball.

Parental impatience is the timebomb inside some parents that when it blows, causes them to yell things like "What did I just say?" or "What the heck are you doing?" Expressions like these are common symptoms of parental impatience.

I have a bad case of parental impatience and I am trying to treat it. But no matter what I do: count to ten, give myself a time out, throw my own tantrum, I can't seem to make myself be one of those parents who just says "Oh, kids will be kids." Just roll with it. Instead, I am constantly asking myself "Why?"

Why don't my kids listen to me? What can I do to just get them to go along? I've tried games, I've tried rewards. I've tried consequences. Time-outs. I've watched Super Nanny (that actually does make me feel a little better). In most of the scenarios, my kids are simply being kids, ages 2 and 4. Problem is, when I have an outbreak of parental impatience, I yell. And as my elder neighbor once pointed out, "There's my neighbor who I never see, but I always hear," I can raise my voice with the best of them.

I'm not proud of this. When my day care provider told me my son was yelling a lot at day care, I knew where he was getting it. It's learned behavior, I recognize that. Or perhaps it's genetic.

So I have been working hard at watching my angry voice and reading a lot about modeling behavior and how it's used in discipline. Why doesn't anyone teach us this stuff? And can't someone, somewhere, develop a pill that parents can take to just help them in times of serious parental impatience? A non-habit forming, natural pill. Or patch. Or shot.

Better yet, make it like that birth control that's implanted in your forearm and effective for five years. That'd be perfect.

If you're like me and could use a little help in the modeling department (and I ain't talking runway, baby), read this article from the American Academy of Family Physicians.

And next time you feel like yelling, take a deep breath and remember, do you want to see your behavior coming back at you?