Why not try?

This all started when Autumn told me a few nights ago as she was sitting in her bed before lights out: "I'm writing a letter to Vietnam."

You just can't walk out on a conversation starter like that. Now, my daughter has perfected the art of stalling before bed-time. She comes at it from many different angles - the slow drag towards the room, finding reasons to come back out, needing a drink, having something important to tell us - you name, she's tried it. And generally it works on me, but her mom seems to be immune to most of them.

But she really had just drafted a chain of two letters that she was sending out. She noticed that the journal she was writing in was made in Vietnam so she wanted to write them a letter thanking them for making the journal that she was writing in. To do that, she was also writing a letter to the company that sold the journal asking them to forward the other letter to the people who made it in Vietnam.

This is what I love about my daughter - she has a why-not, go-get'em attitude. You have to explain, many times and many different ways, why you think she shouldn't do something because she has a lot of out-there ideas. But really, why not let her try? Most of the time she's very effective at getting it done.

And really, why haven't you tried some of those ideas that you've been sitting on but seem kind of out there? What do you have to lose? Life can be an adventure - make it something worth writing home about.