When I was a little kid, my Grandma watched me a lot. And I used to watch her writing stories for romance magazines and the like.
So I was inspired to write as well. Lots and lots of short stories, like one about a princess who gets kidnapped by a dinosaur and is rescued by a nice dragon. They started out a paragraph or two long and eventually reached a few pages in length as I got older.
Eventually I wanted to submit my stories for publication but I only wanted to submit to adult level magazines. My grandma kept trying to make me understand without insulting me why that was a bad idea but I never listened.
I finally gave up writing in my very early tweens when I received a personal rejection letter from Marion Zimmer-Bradley. Since I was a young kid, and my Grandma didn't read science fiction I never knew until much later the awesome I had in my hands was. At the time I became enraged, cried, threw out the (nice) letter and pretty much gave up writing until high school, where I dabbled a little with fanfiction, the TSA-ML, and shared stories. But I never wrote much (except for a blog, to share my experiences in Japan), and never tried to get published again until recently, but my love of writing just isn't as it was when I was a kid. I feel like I lost something.
So, long story short... as a parent or caregiver what would you do to prevent discouragement from unrealistic goals?
