Have you ever wondered what you could have achieved if you were more outgoing, confident, and great at making friends when you were a child? If you had any regrets in this aspect of your childhood, you would surely want to help your child have a better experience in hers.
Starting a career in modeling as a child offers plenty of experiences where your little one can learn valuable life skills she can use to succeed later in life. In fact, this line of work is one of the few that provide children with a chance to learn things like making decisions and interacting with adults on a regular basis even before they reach legal age.
If you’re still unsure about whether your child can benefit from starting an early career in the industry, here are five life skills that she can learn should you decide to help her become a child model:
1. Decision-Making Skills
Adults are faced with difficult decisions all the time, some of which can be life-changing. As a teen or child model, your daughter can begin making decisions at an early age since she will be faced with a lot of choices that can determine her fate in the modeling industry.
From selecting a hairstyle to choosing the type of attire to wear to a photo shoot, making the right choices can help her realize how rewarding it can be to put much thought before making any decisions. Alternatively, she might also get to experience the consequences of some bad choices (e.g., not being cast for a modeling gig) and learn from them.
2. Good Hygiene and Healthy Habits
Observing healthy habits and good hygiene is an essential life skill children need to learn as early as possible. Parents often tell children about regular hand washing, bathing, or brushing teeth every day. If a child is getting into modeling, she will be taught the greater importance of practicing these skills.
In modeling, your child could learn that washing her hands ensures that she stays protected from the germs on the things she touches, and that brushing her teeth would help her maintain a pleasant smile for the camera. She would also be able to appreciate the value of regular baths, especially before a photo shoot or casting call, as she will learn the importance of taking good care of her body so she can look and feel her best.
3. Time Management Skills
As adults, every parent understands that time management is a crucial skill their children need to learn to succeed in their endeavors. Daunting as it may be, you can already start teaching your child about this particular life skill by helping her learn how to measure time and stay on schedule.
In modeling, your child can learn the value of punctuality and how she can benefit from being on time for her commitments. With your guidance, she would learn how to manage her studies, life, and work as a model well by identifying the things that tend to waste her time. This may include video games, social media, and other tasks that don’t provide her any valuable output.
She could also learn how to establish incremental deadlines (e.g., finish dressing up at 9 a.m., arrive at photo shoot set at 10 a.m.) for big projects and limiting the tasks that she includes in her daily schedule according to the level of importance to keep her from feeling burnt out. This will also work well if she is starting to become a skilled multitasker.
4. Money Management
Many adults struggle with cash flow management because they haven’t been trained early on how to spend their money as children. Aside from teaching them about counting and basic arithmetic, children should also learn about how to maximize the use of money in a way that will be most advantageous for them.
Since she will already start earning her own money from working as a model, you can teach her how to manage it so she can be prepared for the future. Help her understand the importance of only spending money on things she needs and always setting aside some for the future. She should also learn that paying with credit cards and writing checks aren’t equivalent to spending free money.
5. Clear and Open Communication
Clarity is an integral aspect of communication that sometimes eludes adults and causes misunderstandings. To help your child avoid this, you need to teach her how to maintain open and clear communication when performing small tasks like ordering food, paying for the items she bought, asking for help in getting dressed, and suggesting to a modeling photographer how she would like her portfolio pictures to look like.
In modeling, your child can also learn to maintain eye contact while speaking or listening. She can keep the conversation pleasant by politely asking for clarifications when being instructed to pose for the camera. Plus, she will be able to practice how to maintain a good conversation during casting calls and auditions.
The Earlier, the Better
Life skills taught during childhood tend to stay with us longer than those picked up as an adult. This means that child and teen models have double the chances of acquiring these five important life skills because they are exposed to situations regular children don’t usually get to encounter at an early age.
