Setting: It's after dinner and my 12-year-old sister, Rochel, is eating cereal at the table. My mom is cleaning up while I'm on the couch designing a page for the upcoming issue of YALDAH.
Rochel: Mom, I think I want to start my own cereal company.
Mom: Go right ahead. --Stops to think.-- Hold on a second, I said that last time and life has never been the same!
It's true. When I was twelve I told my mom I wanted to start a magazine for Jewish girls, and she probably replied something like 'go right ahead'. So I did. Today YALDAH is a thriving, 64-page, full color magazine distributed by subscription and sold in Barnes & Noble. YALDAH Media, Inc. just published it's second book, and we've been running summer and winter retreats for the past five years.
So what is it that makes a twelve-year-old decide to publish a magazine or start a cereal company? How can you encourage your child to dream, and to work to make their dreams come true?
I'm not professing to have any wise parenting advice, since I'm only 19, but I can share what worked with me, some conclusions I've come to, and observations I've made about raising kids with dreams. I invite you to join me.
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