How to Take Your Little One to an Audition

May I brag for a second? Of course I can, it’s my blog. The year I first wrote this, my little dude Jack turned into a booking monster: three big commercial jobs in one month, at an age when he could barely spell commercial. He’s much cooler than I am. Matthew and I had a technique as coaches for taking kids to auditions, and that year we started using it as parents. Here it is.

1) The word audition doesn’t exist

For young children, we never use it. Audition is a four-letter word in our house. It’s always a booking, every single time. Because of that, Jack found joy in the audition room and on set alike; the whole process was fun and rewarding for him, and if it ever stops being, he won’t have to do it anymore.

So when the agent sends him out, we say, “You got a commercial, buddy.” The audition is the job. We congratulate him on getting to go do his commercial. We talk about the script and what might happen. We make a game of it, exactly the way we do in the kid classes at the studio, where it works beautifully. Our job is to make sure he knows we’re proud of him and that he’s earned the chance to go do this.

2) Money never comes up

Don’t mention the dollars. More money, more problems, especially when you’re explaining compensation to a nine-year-old who knows exactly how many Xboxes it buys. The money doesn’t come up before the commercial. Remember: not an audition, a commercial, and they already got it. Don’t tell your child they’ll pay for a year of college if they can just book this one national spot. They don’t need that noise. Keep it fun. As long as your child truly loves to act, and if you’re reading this I assume they do, that’s the reward.

3) When the booking bombs

And with little ones, sometimes it will. They didn’t sleep, they’re hangry, they didn’t get to watch the movie they wanted. Every now and then it just goes badly, because toddlers and little kids are not small adults and they are not robots. So if it goes badly, do not hold a discussion about it. Do not say any of the following: “Why didn’t you do your funny voices?” “Why are you being shy?” “What were you thinking in there?” “Were you really trying?” “Don’t you want to be a star?” Face palm.

First, let them decompress. Then talk about something else entirely: lunch, the park, whatever’s next. If they bring it up, listen, and tell them you’re proud they went. Then let it go, completely, because they will take their cue from you about whether this was a disaster or a Tuesday. Make it a Tuesday. There will be another booking, and the kid who walks into it happy is the kid who gets it.

That’s the whole technique. It’s a booking, money is invisible, and bad days are allowed. Jack is a teenager now and runs the cameras at the studio; the little kids in our classes get the same three rules he did, and they work just as well on a five-year-old as they did on him.