Invite Your Child to Dream Big with a Life List

We're hearing lots about how children today are being pushed to do too much in books like Overachievers:The Secret Lives of Driven Kids by Alexandra Robbins. But having lofty goals is not a bad thing, so why not start them out with big goals from the very beginning?

Over on LifeHack, Rob Crawford spins a nice tale about getting his son to write a "Life List." It's a great activity: sit down and write 100 things you'd like to do in your lifetime. We all should really do this, but the idea of getting a 7 year old child to do it is especially compelling because it lets kids dream big.

You might say that little kids do plenty of dreaming, but this is different because it's focused big-dreaming. Not just wild fantasies, but wild fantasies with the intention of actually carrying them out - and just holding on to this list could make a kid think about his life a whole new way - because I'm guessing most 7 year olds aren't going to put, "get a 1600 on my SATs, study economics at Harvard, and claw my way to middle management" at the top of their list.