What to do When Your Plan Doesn’t Work Out

This morning I decided rather last minute to try keeping my son at home with me during a morning meeting. It was a disaster.

We both slept in later than usual so we were running a bit behind schedule. I have a daily check-in meeting at 9:30am that lasts about 15 minutes so I thought rather than trying to rush to daycare and get back for my meeting I’d see how my son would do playing on his own for a little bit.

I talked to my son about making sure that he stayed in his room and didn’t talk to me unless it was an emergency. We even talked about what exactly an emergency is. “If you want to show me something cool, is that an emergency?” No. “If you’re bleeding, is that an emergency?” Yes. That kind of thing.

For the first 5 minutes he did great. He stayed in his room and did some coloring on his easel. After that he came out of his room and stood by me, quietly. That was ok too but I tried to coax him back to his room. That didn’t work.

From that point on he started talking to me and playing next to me. Thankfully I can be on mute for most of the meeting. Unfortunately right when it was my turn to check-in my son started whining and fussing very loudly. I found out later that his paper boat had ripped.

My saving grace was my husband who came in from walking the dog and helped to keep him occupied while I wrapped up the meeting.

My biggest worry about homeschooling is how I will get work done when my son is home. So I was feeling pretty disappointed that my son didn’t even play by himself for 15 minutes.

Then I took a step back and realized this one day doesn’t really mean much in the long run. My son is still very young and I had done very little to prepare him for how to handle me being in a meeting.

Today I’m telling God about my dreams and also praying that His plan for my son will be done. Perhaps there is something God wants to teach my son or have him experience that will involve something other than homeschool. Whatever God’s plan is I trust it will be better than my own.