Could use prayer

I have tried to write this post more than once, and I keep getting interrupted by exactly who I need prayer about! I’m so frustrated and feel like there is nothing at all I can do. Maybe some of you can lift up a prayer about a tough situation we’ve handled before, but not so easily this time.

We attend a monthly co-op. This year’s theme is exploring engineering (likely to be interesting to a lot of boys), and even though the ages range from 6 to 16 (with even younger siblings playing/coloring nearby), the moms manage to make it interesting for just about everybody. However, my 12yo ds, who has mild autism, finds it mostly over his head. He also says he has no friends there, which is rather true considering his somewhat lacking social skills. The boys near his age are encouraged by the moms to include my ds, and they try, but you can tell it’s not really working well for them either.

In the past, I’ve had ds bring small toys to quietly play with during the lesson/activities, and usually I’ll take him out into the library kids’ area for awhile. Last month, he stayed at his dad’s house instead of attending. Today, I asked his dad if he could watch him, and I thought that was all settled.

However, this evening, his dad told me that having ds over “just wouldn’t fly.” His girlfriend’s invalid father lives with them, and her father is coming home from the hospital tomorrow. There will be nurses visiting and as my son’s dad put it, “a lot of chaos.”

So, now ds is very, very disappointed, and he is determined to do everything in his power to see that we don’t go to co-op tomorrow. There is a guy from NASA speaking for awhile tomorrow and then a Christmas party. That doesn’t interest him right now, though. As ds put it before bed tonight, “If I’m not going to my dad’s, then nobody is going anywhere.” I don’t have anyone else to watch him (that I can think of who would do it last-minute), so he would have to go with us. And I’m just not looking forward to a horrific meltdown on his part tomorrow. We have to leave the house by 9 a.m.

I don’t want my girls to be disappointed by not going (and this was mentioned to him, how that would be unfair to them, but it matters not to ds), and I was looking forward to going myself. I don’t see most of these moms very often. I have asked my girls to come alongside me in prayer that ds will have a change of heart by morning, and I’m asking any of you who would lift this up in prayer to do so as well.

This is very frustrating to me, and I know totally how ds feels, being disappointed at a change of plans that is out of your control. 

Thanks.