I am writing this earlier than I had planned to, because I spent all day on a shoot with a bunch of kids behaving very badly on set. In a bit of fairness, it was a student film and only one kid besides my own had ever worked on a professional set.

That said, these kids behaved badly for any situation requiring kids to pay attention to adults, take directions and follow-through.

Between the dog, who could barely move, no less take commands and the uncooperative kids, the poor director was so exhausted and frustrated and ready to quit film-making forever. And honestly so were my children and I.

Every time the director called “cut” more than half of the kids on set took off. The AD (Assistant Director) had to constantly chase them down for the next take. Even then, the kids never stood still long enough to listen to the corrections to make the next take work.

I have a lot of specific information and advice about working on set, both professional and student sets, film, TV, commercial, dramas, comedy – whatever. For now, I just want to make an analogy.

If the behavior your child displays would be inappropriate in a school classroom, it is totally inappropriate on set or in an audition.

Even if the character your child is portraying is supposed to be loud, obnoxious, a total nightmare, your child needs to be attentive and to follow directions when not in character and the camera isn’t rolling.

In school, and hopefully at home, children are taught to respect the adults, to listen to directions, and to follow them as best they can. They certainly aren’t allowed to talk while the teacher is talking or walk around while the teacher is talking or leave the area between instructions. Even in less restrictive teaching environments like Montessori, children are taught respect for others and good behavior is good behavior in almost any environment. The same rules apply on set.

OK, most of these kids are not professional actors, but the point still holds – nobody loves a DIVA. Bad behavior is bad behavior, end of story.

Your child may be adorable and talented, but if they have trouble with authority figures, like to test boundaries, are easily bored or distracted or generally don’t listen or behave well – STAY AWAY from acting as a career.

Film and TV shoots are boring with a lot of waiting. There are a lot of things going on around while your child is supposed to be concentrating on the directions they’ve been given. There are a lot of people telling you what to do. (As a side note –YOU should not be one of the people giving direction – but that is the theme of another post.)

In short, acting kids are expected to behave like mini adults and act like kids only when the camera is rolling. If this is too challenging, save your kid, the director, producer, AD, crew, other actors and yourself a lot of grief and find another outlet for your child’s creativity.