Count Your Dinners Before You Sign Anyone Up for Fall

The verb in Luke 14:28 is "sitteth." Most of us remember the tower and the people laughing at it, and skip the part where the builder sits down first. He doesn't start with a shovel or a good feeling about the lot. He sits and he counts, and only after that does anything get built.

That one posture is most of what I know about September. By the second week of school the sheets have all come home, and every one of them is for something good: baseball, a piano teacher, a youth class that meets on Wednesday nights, a reading club some mother runs out of her basement. Nobody sends home a flyer for something you'd obviously refuse.

What do I write on the paper before anyone says yes?

Seven lines on the back of a school flyer, one per dinner, with whatever is happening that evening written beside each. Then I mark the dinners where everybody who lives here will be at the table at the same time, which means David and me and Caleb and Lily and Ben. Emma comes up from Provo some Sundays, and I treat her as a bonus and leave her out of the count.

Our standing week this fall goes like this. Monday is family home evening, so that's safe. Tuesday is Caleb's practice with David helping coach, so we eat in shifts and I give it half. Wednesday evenings are open. Thursday David works from home and is there, and Friday is pizza and a movie. Saturday has a game and then dinner whenever we get back, which earns a question mark. Sunday is Sunday.

That's five whole dinners, one half and one question mark, before anything new gets added. One class on a Wednesday night takes the five to four. Everybody in the house would feel it, though none of us could tell you why supper got louder.

I like the paper because feelings about being busy are cheap and a count is hard to argue with. The American Academy of Pediatrics has said for years that children need play nobody scheduled for them, and when I'm looking at a page with no blank evening on it, I believe them.

What does the tower verse actually say?

It says less than I'd like. Luke 14 is Jesus talking to a crowd about what following him costs, and the tower belongs to that conversation, so nobody should preach it as a verse about soccer.

For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?

Luke 14:28

But look at what he picks for an example.

A man building a tower. Nothing holy about the job, and he presents the counting as plain sense, the thing any sensible person does before taking on a big project. I figure he wouldn't mind if a mother borrowed the habit for a calendar.

The two verses after it are what stay with me. The man lays the foundation and can't finish, and "all that behold it begin to mock him." The cost of the unfinished tower is partly that people watched. A family has its own version. A child who quits baseball in October has a coach who counted on him, teammates, and his own face in the car on the way home. Dropping a good thing midseason costs more than never starting it, so the cheapest no is the one you say before the sign-up, when it only costs somebody a slightly awkward text.

How does a family decide which activities stay?

We have a few rules, and they're ours, so take what works.

I want at least four whole dinners a week, and below that something goes. I decide what before the season starts so nobody has to be the villain in October.

A new yes needs an old no. If Lily wants riding lessons, then something she's doing now ends, or something of mine does.

The kids get a real vote on what stays and no vote on the floor. Caleb can tell us whether baseball is worth Tuesdays. He doesn't get to decide Tuesdays don't have a dinner.

The good things are the hard ones, because a bad activity declines itself and the ones that hurt are the ones where the teacher is lovely and your child is good at it, and for those I ask the child what they'd miss if it stopped, in one sentence. Sometimes the answer is "Jake" or "the snack," and then the thing they love may be a person or a granola bar, which you can arrange without a Wednesday-night class.

Friday is the dinner I guard hardest. I've gone on at length about movie night with an eleven-year-old and a two-year-old, which tells you how much of my week I've handed over to one couch.

How do I say no without giving a speech?

I say it short and before the deadline: "We're full this fall, but thank you for thinking of us." The reason stays out on purpose, because a reason is something a kind person can solve, and if I say Wednesdays are hard then somebody offers Thursdays.

The same goes for any paper that comes home on a Sunday and is due Friday. I wrote about a birthday invitation that came home for Sunday and was due Friday, and the reply is just easier to write on Monday than on Thursday night.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many activities is too many for one child?

I don't have a number. Count the dinners instead. In our house it works out to roughly one team or lesson per child per season, plus church, but a family with a night-shift parent would count differently and be right.

What if my kid wants to do everything?

Then every yes gets traded for something, out loud. Hand them the paper. Eleven-year-olds are good at arithmetic when it's their Saturdays being added up.

Does it have to be dinner?

No. If somebody's job makes dinner impossible, pick another meal and guard that one instead, since I doubt the table cares what time it is.

What if my spouse and I disagree about what stays?

Count on the paper first, together, before the argument starts. It's much harder to fight over "I think we're busy" when you're both looking at the same seven lines.

I'm doing this tonight after family home evening, on this week's flyer. I already know about Saturday, since we're driving to Provo for Emma's birthday dinner and she turns twenty-two on Friday. So what I'm hunting for is Caleb's game time, and whether there's a Wednesday I forgot I'd said yes to.

with love, Melissa