Last week, after lots of nudging: I signed the boys up with a rather large kiddies modeling agency. Since then, Noah has been called to two castings. The first was on Monday. WELL.
I'm not sure if kids should do modeling and be involved with advertising / selling products etc. Obviously I am a proud mama and there is that part of me that wants to see my boys in a TV ad or magazine, billboard etc. Obviously. Moms all think / know that their kids are beautiful and wonderful and like to brag. Truth. Also, I figured that we could use a portion of their 'earnings' on them like nice trips or holidays or on things that they would really enjoy. I really want to turn our courtyard at home in to a huge, amazing playroom for them. At the moment, it is empty and concrete and un-fun. Then the rest of it would be put away for them for later. This is my logic and I'm sticking to it.
So on Monday we arrive at a very large casting exercise. There were loads of parents and toddlers and everyone looked rather serious. I even conditioned Noah's hair and put clean clothes on the kid. That's effort in my house. The process was very simple: Sign in, complete name tag with casting number and wait your turn. They called us in and wanted Noah to stand on the carpet, against a wall to get a head shot. Fair enough. In principle.
Noah did not want to get off my hip, so the nice casting director suggested we let him watch another kid go through the process and see that it's not all that laborious. Except, Noah got distracted by the balcony (as kids do) and was really just not interested. I mean... What a weird thing to ask of a kid, if you think about it. I took him to The Wall again and again, he was like "Nah, I'm not getting off your hip chick". Right. I told them that I really didn't want to try force him, it's not a big deal, we'll come to the next casting etc. She said that she was so glad that I felt that way about it, and said that I was one of those "relaxed moms".
This left me wondering the obvious: How do other mothers react in those situations? Graeme works in advertising and has run a few castings before. He said that he has seen some parents really freak out at their kids when they don't "cooperate" in that situation. Threatening to hit their kids, shouting at them, threatening in general etc. Now, I would threaten Noah with a smack on the bum if he tried to jump off a balcony / hurt his brother etc, but man. Really? I mean, it would have been nice if he just stood there and had his shot taken, but he really didn't want to. It's also really weird of him, as he loves performing and is really easy to direct (his mom is a blogger after all) so I didn't want to push the issue. You know?
So we left, all smiles, and as soon as we strapped him in and got in the car, he piped up "I want to take picture" at which point we really did just laugh. We went home instead. We went for a walk to 'his' shop and got him and Benjamin a chocolate and spent the afternoon together. We were called back for another casting today, but I couldn't make it on short notice. We would go again if they called us, I do want to see if Noah enjoys it. He loves seeing pictures of himself on my blog, facebook etc and he understands so much more than I give him credit for. He would love seeing a photo of himself in a magazine. Really. He played his school concert DVD a million times because "Noah is on TV!". If he ever tells me, or if I even half sense that he isn't in to it, then we won't do it. Any of it. If he doesn't want to be on my blog, then I won't put his pictures up either.
So anyway, I'm still not totally sure how I feel about all of this, but I'll let you know how the next casting goes.