Meet the Model Search judges:

Erin Lundgren-Scimeca, Director of Scouting at New York Model Management

Erin has been in the industry for 20 years. She worked as a scout at Elite in the Nineties when they represented most of the supermodels in the industry. Erin organized the Elite Model Look contest and then was promoted to Director of Elite Model Look North America. Five years later, she moved to New York Models to run their scouting division.Erin oversees the new faces as well as the movement and placement of the models at the agency.

Page Parkes, Founder/Owner of Page Parkes Corporation

Page founded her agency in Texas 30 years ago and made a name for herself throughout the international modeling circuit. She was one of the first agents to open a branch in the lucrative Miami market (her agency there eventually merged with Ford). She has discovered big-name stars, including Channing Tatum, Shannon Elizabeth, Woody Harrelson, Brooke Burns, and Alexis Bledel. Her finds are placed in major agencies across the globe and her expert eye landed her on E!’s reality show Scouted. Read all about Page here: Exclusive Interview With Page Parkes From Scouted

Susan Miner, Supermodel, Psychologist, Author, and Founder of Susan Miner Beauty

As an international supermodel, Susan Miner graced the cover of numerous top magazines, including Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire, Self, and Harper’s Bazaar. Her face represented such powerhouses as Revlon, Maybelline, and L’Oreal. After she retired she got her BA in Psychology (Summa Cum Laude) and MA in Counseling and then became an adjunct Professor of Psychology and therapist.

Currently, as President of Beauty From the Inside Out, Inc., Susan is a keynote speaker, Beautiful Energy workshop facilitator, author and counselor. Her expertise as a supermodel and therapist merged into one passion: To raise your inner peace and beauty! Susan is committed to helping you tap into and unleash your Beautiful Energy. Her book Beautiful Energy: Exercises to Reveal Your Inner Peace contains the step by step of how to reduce your anxiety in written, audio and video format.

Subcribe for free mini energy sessions and beauty tips: Youtube: Susan Miner

Read my interview with Susan Miner.

Jill Johnson: Former Model, Founder of Tear Sheet magazine, Writer, Modeling Mentor, and Stage Mom. Read more about Jill Johnson.  (And stay tuned for a blog in defense of stage moms!)

Subscribe to the free monthly Modeling Mentor Newsletter!

Wake-up call: that is not at all how it works. First, you have to figure out which agencies are legit and which just want your money for classes or fees (read 5 Warning Signs You Are Being Scammed by a Modeling Agency). Then you have to find out if the agency wants to rep your cutest kid ever, whose photos may arrive along with 100 other submissions of cutest kids ever on any given day. Should you “luck out” and land your tyke with an agent, then the real work begins (which is why I used the quotes; you may soon be wishing cutest kid ever got dumped in the trash rather than signed on).

Few clients book from photos alone. They will want to see your kid live, often along with 250 other kids from a 50-mile radius. Some clients will have callbacks, so you may have to schlep your kid two days in a row to photo studios in remote locales (try Union City, NJ, from CT, for example). Usually all for nothing. The odds just aren’t in your favor, no matter how CUTE, with a capital C, your kid is.

And all these castings cost money. It’s not that clients ask you to pay anything (turn and run if that happens!), but believe me, you pay. Here’s an example:

On Monday, both my 10-year-old son and my 3-year-old daughter had castings (for how we “lucked out” and landed with an agency: read More on Kid Modeling) in New York. We paid $25 for train tickets to New York, $16 for a taxi from Grand Central through midtown traffic to 31st and 11th Ave (we usually take the subway but there is no subway that goes close enough to that locale to not leave us all swimming in sweat on a 94-degree day), $17 for a taxi back, and $50 for a parking ticket (I know, this is a recurring theme; read Toys R Us Booking Equals Mega Bucks?) cuz there was a traffic jam on the way to the train station so I had to park in a 2-hour spot. I figured I could have my sitter move it, until I realized the second set of keys was locked inside it. Oops.

We have heard nothing from those castings, which is usually the drill. Especially when the pre-casting prep for the 3-year-old (“big laugh when they say ‘cheese!’”) did not work. She gave ‘em a half-hearted smile that would be unlikely to sell any Children’s Place clothes, even though she is the cutest kid ever. There are no do-over’s at castings. They shuffle the wee ones through the line like parts on a conveyor belt, shoot a Polaroid (time allotment: 10 seconds per kid), and out you go.

Still think it sounds like fun? OK, you may have what it takes then. Hopefully your kid does too. Keep reading. I promise to write more soon about the rewarding aspects of stagemomhood.

Enter the Modeling Mentor Model Search and get discovered by the top agents who receive my free Monthly Newsletter!

Judy Garland in “Wizard of Oz”

Clearly Mrs. Gumm took things way too far, but few stars would have made it without a push. The key is to find a way to gently push in the direction where a kid shows potential, not shove them so hard they get whiplash (and lasting emotional scars/drug addictions). As my nine-year-old is pretty serious about dancing (and acting), I’ve asked any serious dancer I encounter about how much is too much. Almost all say they wanted to quit at some point when they were kids, but their parents pushed them, they stuck with it, and they’re glad they did. I guess the question is when does push come to shove? It takes work to become great at anything and kids tend to be lazy. Although Amy Chua took pushing (and shoving) to the extreme, I think her book Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mom made some excellent points about coddled, unmotivated American children.

For now, pushing and shoving don’t work into the toddler modeling equation. The wee ones have to love it or they won’t last past the first booking. On these little breaks from real life, there’s more hand-holding between T and me than there would be in our chaotic house of six. I don’t offer her speed but perhaps break a few nutrition rules when packing the snacks. I carefully assess her response when I say, “We’re going to New Jersey for pictures.” So far, this statement still yields a huge grin and a question of what toys she’ll get to play with this time. The big motivation for me, stagemom/chauffeur, is not the money (read about that here) or the tear sheets (these shots were for packaging; we’ll have to buy the toys to get the tear sheets!) or the blog material. I’m pushing open doors. Print modeling leads to commercials, which lead to acting opportunities. I was obsessed with acting as a kid, and I see that gene in two of my kids. What I would have given for the chance to audition in New York. J will be auditioning for Sesame Street this week and Matilda on Broadway this weekend. Being a realist, I suspect these experiences will be great opportunities for learning to deal with rejection. That is a lesson that is blatantly absent in most kids activities these days.

Are stage moms any different from parents who are paying for expensive extra training for their young athletes or intensive tutoring and SAT prep classes to plot a course to the Ivys? Maybe we’re worried about child actors ending up like Lindsay Lohan (see the latest news)? Comment and let us know what you think!

Stay tuned for my Stylemama pic and the skinny on Fashion Week.

Sign Up for Monthly Blog Highlights