Our son does child modelling in Seoul.

In this video we show a day where our son Yul has a photoshoot. He was a model for this kids suit company. We never had plans for our child to do any modelling. Agencies and companies saw his photo and we started to get contacted and asked if he does modelling. He only does a few things, and we say no to most things.

For us, when he does have a photoshoot, we try to make the whole day fun for him. These photos were actually taken over several months with three different sessions. It’s not easy to get a toddler into suits!

I wanted to talk a bit about our thinking behind letting our son do this. We really aren’t interested in pushing our child into a career so we don’t take him to any auditions, we only go when he is already selected to be in a final round and they need a screen test. We only do things where we can get some great photos out of it, or he can have a cool experience. Child modelling is hard, it’s easy to take photos of your kid at home, but it’s much harder to get them to perform in front of a strange photographer or camera man.

I do give some advice for parents who think their child can be a model in the video as well.

For this photoshoot, we really liked the CEO of this kids suit company, and the photographer and staff were very patient and kind. They also wanted to continue to work with Yul after the first shoot, even when they could have picked another model. But now that these sessions have finished, we aren’t interested in him doing any modelling for quite a while. We will consider if any amazing opportunities come up. But for now it’s important that he has a normal childhood.

We do hear horror stories about pushy stage parents and overworked kids in the industry, so we are always thinking about the downside of this. As we show in the video, we try to make the whole day fun for Yul. Luckily these types of studios are very big with lots of space so he can play. Other times when he has been a model for a photography studio the staff have super fun and he has had a great time. But it’s hard to get kids into different outfits and keep a positive mood. As parents we don’t want to be dragging him to many shoots all the time.

So while our son is definitely a natural, we don’t want him to have a career of this at this age. We’ll see what his interest is as he gets older.