I manage a home with five children in it.  Our oldest is 9 and our youngest is 8 months.  Two children are students, the middle child vacillates between an aspiring reader and a toddler with emotional fits (she is four!)  As I write this my toddler is fishing around in his glass of milk for the piece of cheese he dropped in there while I was pouring my coffee.  Yeah.  It’s like that.  Excuse me one moment!

Toddlers need direct supervision.  There are many days I feel torn between adequate attention to education and cuddling with my littles on the couch with their favorite story, or training them properly. (We do NOT put our hands in our milk!)

Old ideas are not always best.  

Recently, I have been bound by an old idea about our homeschool lunchtime.  My planned schedule is tight, if we miss a move, the whole thing goes downhill very quickly.  I know you can relate to this!  Since I have a nursing infant, our “schedule” is interrupted as her naptimes constantly shift based on her body’s needs.  Our schedule says that my older students should complete math lessons before lunch.  Some days I would push lunch out late because we had started our day late.  This upset the toddlers.  Toddlers appreciate a regular and predictable schedule.  By the time I got them fed they were an emotional wreck.  They should have been laid down for naps an hour past… but… but… home school schedule is paramount, right?  We have done this so often I begin to feel defeated the moment I know our schedule was going to be “off” for the day.

But God is faithful! Take your problems to God for help.  He WILL give you solutions!  I have been griping about this conundrum to my girlfriends.  Today I sent up a desperate prayer.   Lord!  WHAT do I do?

Like a ray of light in the fog of my mind, it dawned on me:  Why do we have to eat lunch all together?  Somewhere in the foundations of my homeschool, with only toddlers to serve, I had decided that was important.  Now, mind you, I OFTEN throw lunch at my kids and rush around madly doing dishes and laundry, throwing random glances at the table to make sure things are in order. (They usually aren’t!)  Lunch, quite frankly, is not a “break” at our house, not for me.  It is instead the utter chaos of messy children and frazzled Mama attempting a level of multi-tasking that has YET to be achieved with any success.

“Why,” asked the Thought, “shouldn’t you feed the toddlers an hour earlier than the school age children?”  Ohhhhhh, my frazzly self grabbed onto the Thought eagerly, and immediately arrived at a flood of reasons why that would be SO. MUCH. BETTER!  Reason number one:  managing two or three messy children is a LOT easier than the pressure of pulling it off with five.  That sweet, quiet, well-mannered group of kids may someday appear at my kitchen table, ready to enjoy this week’s read aloud while they munch.  Maybe when they are older?

While my older students enjoy a quiet room free of distractions as they study Math, my younger ones enjoy a supervised lunch with Mama.  Where I used to be entertaining toddlers and adjudicating disputes while waiting for the others to finish (full of stress that they wouldn’t be timely and my day would be RUINED.), I now have time to tuck wee ones into naptime before my older children, studies completed, come down for lunch.  Now I get to enjoy a QUIET lunch with them, and I might even get to share a read aloud, or wash up dishes without worrying about what my toddler might be drowning in his milk this time.

I am elated. 

But listen, the point is not about this specific solution that works for me at this point in time.  Rather, the Point is that when you seek God’s wisdom for your situation, He will give it to you.  (James 1:5)

Gods Wisdom, in His time, for my immediate need.  This was JUST what I needed.  Next month, the dynamics of my life will shift; and I will need new ideas, more wisdom and always Peace.  I hope I am learning to go more quickly to my Father for His help.  His hand is not too short to save, nor His ear too dull to hear.  (Isaiah 59:1)

There is no one right schedule, but there is ONE solution: Take it to the Lord in Prayer.  

Post by Charlyn W.