Benefits of acting training for kids – it’s not just for acting
was just in deep discussion, with a dad, who has teenage daughter who wanted to be an actress when she was younger with all of her heart, but she did not pursue it…
He told me she had expressed a huge interest in acting, when she was in elementary school. She did take dance when she was younger and still does, but he and his wife never put her into acting training because they felt that acting would not be a wise profession for her to get into when she was much older. Why did they feel this way about acting? Because they were thinking way ahead and they believed that if she became an actress, she would struggle in the acting life for money, for consistent jobs, to be okay financially, those types of reasons. They told her about how most actors barely make enough money to survive and therefore have to work other jobs in order to remain actors. They were worried 10 years ahead.
That full circle moment and that dad’s thoughts then lead me to the below false assumptions:
a) Sports and dance or art or karate are encouraged for other kids to pursue at young ages. But acting somehow, even at a young age, gets this connotation that because someone is acting training as a child, that they are going to be doing it for forever and that they will only want to do this for the rest of their lives. Also, some parents assume that acting training always leads directly to an acting career. Both of these are false assumptions. In fact, more children that train in acting in their younger years, go on to professions outside of acting, than those that say within the industry. Acting should be just like all other things that children can desire to do and have fun with. Acting should be seen as a strong foundation to a lot of opportunities in their lives, just the way playing sports are a great foundation for their longer-term health.
b) Acting training skills do not just lead to strong acting for acting auditions. It leads to a number of other highly desired skills. Below is just the short list of things child actors gain:
- All around Confidence
- Looking people in the eye when they talk to them
- How to listen actively
- How to enter a room with poise and presence
- Deeper Respect for their peers and elders
- Ability to Interview well
- Improvisation, Thinking on their feet
- Communicating with their peers
- Getting in touch with how they are feeling
- Stronger Reading Skills
- Speech – Articulation and Enunciation
- Focus and Concentration
Benefits of acting training for kids – training for acting is so much more than training to be a child actor. The skills carry on for a lifetime.
Just make sure that your child gets into acting for the right reasons, because they want to, and that you all realize that acting jobs may not come right away.