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.

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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.

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Due to a huge delay at the GW Bridge (add 1 hour to aforementioned drive time), we arrived late—huge no, no. I imagined several mini models waiting, parents glaring at me as we entered the studio. Fortunately T’s shot was a single. And fortunately she made up for her tardiness with a stellar performance having an animated conversation on a toy cell phone with her hair in two cute little buns (modeling perk: new hairstyle ideas). The photographer—relaxed, nice, phew—got the shot so quickly that he added another shot, which involved T singing into a pink microphone. She requested “Call Me Maybe” as her boogie-down song and had a great time jamming with the kid wrangler. I was shuffled away from the set—interfering former-model mom—but I could watch it all on a computer screen. Oh, the joys of the modern age of digital photography. All we saw back in the day were a couple of Polaroids.

Speaking of, when will T see her work? Possibly February on toy packaging, but maybe never as the shots could be for the European market. (That’s more info than a model usually gets, btw.) Barely three, T does not seem too preoccupied with issues of instant gratification. She was thrilled to learn her other shots will be in Toys-R-Us newspaper inserts before Halloween. (I think maybe just the word “Halloween” is what made her beam, but whatever works.)

I took the Tappan Zee Bridge on the way back. WAY better. T napped so she felt like she was home in the blink of an eye, which I hope diffuses any suspicions she has that Mom is nuts to do this.

A precious tidbit of info I learned at the studio made the travel worth it: A kid came the day before, for one shot (so we’re talking $100), from Killington, Vermont! OMG, there are people much crazier than I am. So for those of you who are wondering, Can my kid model if we live three states away from New York? The answer is YES!

How to Be a Model Tip: Some bookings have “brings”—things the client has requested that you bring along. The agency told me to bring a mix of pink, mint green, and lavender leggings and shirts. I found an assortment, none without a stain. The client didn’t use anything I brought, which may have been due to the state of T’s hand-me-down wardrobe, but in my experience is typical. Since I also was kindly informed not to buy anything, I knew the “brings” were just for back-up.

I’m going to add “How to Be a Model” Tips to upcoming blogs (where appropriate).

While not totally appropriate in a kid model blog post, have you seen the shirtless Abercrombie & Fitch male models’ cover of Carly Rae Jepson’s “Call Me Maybe”? If this blog bored you, I promise this hot display of six-packs in the video below will not. Oh, the fond memories conjured by images of the Duomo and hunky guys…

Abercrombie & Fitch Models in Milan

What would it be like to date one of these guys? Read my latest Male Model blog post!

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Now, we can get into tabulating the net profits from the Toys-R-Us booking that came along a couple of castings later. (We will set aside the gas, tolls, train tix, ferris wheel diversion, work time lost going to those castings, and just chalk that up as mostly quality 1:1 mom:kid time.)

The ferris wheel in Toys R Us in Times Square. A nice post-casting stop-off.

Kid worked 1 hour, from 2 to 3 PM (exactly in the middle of nap time, even though the form we filled out at the casting asked for nap time and I wrote 1:30 PM. It is totally not surprising that Kid was booked exactly at nap time; what is surprising is that they even asked about nap time at all). Earned $100. Minus agency fee of $20. $80 left. Parking ticket outside Union City, NJ, studio = $35 (I swore the sign said no parking on Thursday, not Tuesday). $45 left. Gas for trip from CT to NJ and back = $20 (maybe more, since chic Minivan still had bulky bike rack on back and shell on top from recent vacation). $25 left. Tolls = Let’s say $0 since they went on the E-ZPass and I don’t ever see an E-ZPass bill, so it’s like taking a bite of someone else’s cookie—it doesn’t count. Work time lost for 5-hr outing, hmm, depends  (why 5 hours for a 1-hour booking, you ask? Hit rush hour on the way back and accident on West Side Highway, which we were on cuz GPS said to go home via Manhattan, which didn’t seem like a great idea, but I love the Big Apple, so I figured, What the heck, Midtown Tunnel here we come! [Toll for Midtown Tunnel was not an issue, considering aforementioned reasoning about E-ZPass costs]). On a really productive day, work time could equal $500, but on a day like this when I check e-mail, FB, Twitter all morning, eat lunch and read NY Times Book Review, and then blog to avoid doing the assignment I will be paid for, we can figure $20 for the one paragraph of actual work I will complete. So bottom line, Toys R Us booking net = ~$0.

Oh well, T had a blast driving the Jeep in her shot (SHE was the driver, not her morose little date. You go, girl). The kid wrangler (the person who makes morose mini models smile cheek to cheek) was one of the most talented I’ve ever seen.

Nothing to go into the giveback.org fund this time, but I’ll read the parking signs more carefully next time.

The juicy stuff from “About Face: Supermodels Then and Now” later this week: partying, drugs, sexual harassment, plastic surgery…

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