While my daughter was little, complete strangers would come up to me in public and hand me their card, saying that she was so beautiful she really should be a model. She wasn’t old enough to know what that would entail so I always smiled and said thank you, took the card, and then later disposed of it in the nearest trash bin.
The only exception was when the film processing lab folks asked permission to use a picture I had taken of her in an ad campaign. She was three at the time and thought it was a cool idea so I said yes and put the money in her bank account. For some time afterward her picture popped up in the various branches of the store and at the mall and she had fun when people told her they saw it.
As she got older, she heard other girls admiring models and actresses and so she decided she wanted to be one or the other. Since actress was one of her choices, I took her down to the community theater and we both auditioned for parts in various plays. She learned a lot about how to handle rejection, how to project when on stage, how to smile even when you don’t feel happy, and how to work as a member of a team. She also learned that she didn’t want to be an actress, although she was quite capable of singing a solo in front of 500 people.
So next we tried modeling. We did a couple of photo shoots and she discovered that modeling is really boring. It is all about surface appearance and has nothing to do with who you are. On top of that, the clothes were often uncomfortable.
Although I could have put her into those pageants and possibly she would have done well, I chose not to subject her to anything like that unless she asked to do it. Her major preference was sports, so she played a lot of sports. She had a few dance classes, a year or two of piano lessons, some gymnastics lessons, and some tennis lessons, all at her request. The only thing I ask of her is that she finish out a season or a class interval because it isn’t fair to anyone to quit in the middle.
Kids are people from the very beginning and although we as parents should guide them, we need to be aware of what they like to do and what their talents are.