When plans change
The trip is off, the shop is shut, the teacher swaps the plan. This is about what a child does in the ten minutes after.
Plans that change
Something is not happening the way it was meant to. What does the next thing do?
For grown-ups
What this pack teaches
A changed plan is a real loss, and this pack is not about minding less. It is about the small next step that lets the afternoon keep going.
When a plan changes, the hard part is rarely the new plan. It is the gap: the old picture is gone and nothing has replaced it yet. A child stuck in that gap is not refusing — they have nowhere to put their attention. Practising the next step on a quiet day makes it available on a day when the swimming is cancelled.
- Ask what is happening instead.
- Say the new plan out loud.
- Find one part that has not changed.
- Ask when the old plan can happen.
- Pick something to do in the meantime.
How to use this
- Sit next to your child rather than opposite them. This works best as a thing you do together, not a thing you set them.
- Read the speech bubbles aloud if that helps. Nothing here needs to be read independently.
- Talk about the picture before the buttons. “What's happening here?” is often more useful than the sorting itself.
- Five situations is a session. Stopping after two is a fine session too.
Practising away from the screen
- Say plan changes out loud as they happen: “the park is shut, so we are going to the library instead.” Naming the swap gives your child something to hold.
- Do a tiny practice change when nothing is at stake — swap the pudding, take a different way home — and talk about what you both did next.
- Keep one thing steady across the change. If the swimming is off, the after-swimming hot chips can still happen, and saying so early helps more than saying it late.
Things you can say in the moment
- “The plan has changed: no park today, library instead. I will tell you what we do first when we arrive.”
- “You were counting on the park. That is a real thing to mind about, and it is still not happening today.”
- “What is one thing that has not changed?”
- “Do you want to know the new order, or do you want two minutes first?”
What not to push
- A child does not have to be pleased about the new plan. Minding about it and carrying on are two different things, and only the second one is being practised.
- Asking why the plan changed is not stalling. A child who has been told the reason usually needs fewer of the other questions.
- Needing a few minutes on their own before the new plan is a fine way to handle it, and it belongs on the helpful mat too.
If this pack is hard today
If the sorting is too much today, just look at the pictures and say what is happening in each one. You can also do it the other way round: read the card, and ask what the child in the picture might do next. Two cards is a session.
Nothing is counted
No marks, no tally, no percentage, nothing saved. A child who taps the other mat gets exactly the same screen as a child who did not, because the explanation is the point and the tap is only how they get to it.
Social situations depend on the people in them. Everything here is one common way things tend to go, not a rule — and a child who reads a situation differently from us may well be reading their own life correctly.
Social situations depend on the people in them. Everything here is one common way things tend to go, not a rule. This is an educational resource, not therapy or medical advice.