Sweet Sixteen

Today is Lexi's birthday. It is not her sixteenth birthday, it is her fourteenth, but her focus today and for the past three months has been that this is a milestone birthday because fourteen means only two more years until sixteen!!!
From the time Lexi was a baby she has always wanted to be older than what she was. She rolled over at less than two months, crawled at four, and walked at nine! I thought she was brilliant, but looking back I believe she was always looking ahead to that next step, patiently biding her time until developmentally and physically she had what it took to balance on those hands and knees, then pull herself up to toddle on two feet.
Lexi has the next eight years of her life planned out from the kind of car she wants to drive to the type of "school" job she wants to have. She knows where she wants to go to college and what she wants to study. Actually, now that I think about it, she has gone beyond eight years...She knows the type of man she wants to marry and how many kids she wants to have. She also has lots of ideas on how she is going to raise those kids and most of those are opposite of the way I do things (I try not to take that personally).
Luckily, Lexi's goals are guided by her steadfast values (thank you Young Women's program for having our back on that one. I just said tonight--for the 117th time--I would not want to raise teenagers alone! I need the reinforcement Young Women's provides on so many levels!).
So, I have this wonderful daughter who is outstanding in so many ways. She is goal oriented and driven, fabulous qualities for a young woman of fourteen to possess. My question is...how do I encourage those qualities, but also encourage her not to wish her life away? She believes that when her sixteenth birthday arrives, a magical world will open up and all her troubles will disappear. She will have the independence she has craved her entire life, she will be able to work and manage more than weekly allowance or babysitting money. She will be able to date and drive! I understand the appeal, but I also know of the challenges that are inevitably waiting for her. Just as that flight of stairs, and sharp corner on the kitchen cabinet created obstacles for her to overcome as an ambitious toddler, Lex will face temptations and pressures that will test her and complicate the path that she has so confidently laid out for herself. I believe that it is important to teach children what they need to know and then release them to the world to learn for themselves the hows and whys of this crazy life. I said I believe this--that doesn't mean I will be able to do it. I consider myself one of those "helicopter parents" you know, the kind that "hover." I try not to be--but it is in my nature. (Needless to say, I read Love and Logic three times--I just couldn't do it!)
I guess, for now, I'll just do my best to be positive and encouraging. Try not to scare her into reverting backwards with tales about mean managers, car accidents and boys who never call. And last, but not least, cherish those moments when she is happy being at the movies with the family, playing "ghost in the graveyard" with her siblings, and begging for sleepovers with her cousin AJ. Sixteen will be here before we know it, and I can only hope that what lies ahead after that will be as sweet as Lexi truly believes it will be.