Most parents have been petitioned for a new pet at least once, if not several hundred times.  For example, about a month ago my 10-year-old daughter Grace asked for a guinea pig when I was rushing out the door to a meeting at work.  Seizing the opportunity to provide some good solid parenting advice, I turned around and told her that she needed to learn that she would be much more successful with requests such as this if she scheduled time with me and had all her facts and information prepared. I didn’t think anything else about it and the guinea pig was not brought up again.

Then, recently, when I was traveling for work Grace holed up in the family office and started working furiously on a project of a top secret nature.  When I called to talk to my husband he told me that she’d been hacking away her his computer for the two days.

I arrived back from my trip and Grace immediately announced a family meeting at 4:00 pm.  Our entire family gathered in the office and with the poise of an executive, Grace presented us a full PowerPoint presentation on the reasons why she should have one of the neighbor’s kittens including an analysis of the expenses and potential problems with adding a kitten to the Jumonville Family.   Jeff and I looked at each other with mouths wide open while having a proud twinkle in our eye as well.   She thoughtfully considered all the protests we would have and answered them in advance, laid out the expenses accurately and added an emotional selling slide as the closer.

Jeff and I are still flabbergasted and we want to hear from other parents about what you think we should do.  Check out the presentation (below) and then cast your vote for whether or not Grace ought to have a kitten.  We welcome comments, too.

I am slightly worried that she is going to start doing presentations on going to get ice cream, spending the night with friends, etc.  But at the same time, we don’t want to ignore her serious and very responsible request.

Grace’s Kitten Pitch - [Click Here]