Notes & Planning Page

 Disregard your children's privacy

Give your power away

Make your family/children into a brand rather than vulnerable human beings

Get a big head

Fans are not your fans, and certainly not your friends. You are entertainment to them, nothing more. They will turn on you in a second and have the ability to ruin you because you unwittingly gave them that power in exchange for them stroking your ego.

The NDA is where the slippery slope begins. You're already in trouble and selling your soul to the devil when you sign on the dotted line.

Vanity, Pride, Greed - these are the cornerstones to networks and sponsors getting you on board to make them money.

You will be approached by people who want to represent you and want you to represent them. Make no mistake, this is not altruistic, no matter how they make it sound. ANYONE who approaches you is opportunistic. They want a piece of the pie. They will court you and flash dollar signs in front of your eyes, stroke your ego, and appeal to your vanity, pride, and greed to get you to aim for more, so they can have a piece of it. There is always a cost, always.

Your children have a right to their childhoods. They have a right to grow up normally without having things like their missteps, injuries, embarrassments, disciplining, awkward phases, etc. becoming fodder. 

Your children have a right to not be scrutinized, criticized, or talked about on social media. And if you put them out there, you can't reasonably expect people not to do these things just because they're children. The fact that they're children and should be protected means you never should have made your children community property in the first place.

Make no mistake, by putting your children on reality TV or making them Instagram/You Tube famous, you are making them community property. Once you put them in the media, the public at large knows their names, their likeness, where they live, what they like, what they're weaknesses and areas of vulnerability might be. You put your children at risk.

The thing about kids is that at first they love being on camera and love the attention, but it will soon become old and tiresome to them because it will become work. They'll be required to comply with production schedules, give up things, do and say things they don't want to, repeat things for more 'takes', and will get tired of always having people in their space.

you can say you'll stop when it gets to be not worth it or your kids begin to object, but the problem with that perspective/plan is that you won't know it's time until it's past time and you've already done damage. What will inevitably happen is that you'll urge and cajole kids through the process at first, maybe even through bribery (Come on, so, just do this one more time, and we'll go get ice cream).

The smart kids are the ones who reject and go their own way, make their own money, and don't give in to becoming "influencers." Isn't an influencer just a grifter?

It's a trap because you become reliant on easy money, and once that goes away because of scandal or you just becoming stale or last week's news, and that income stream starts to dry up, you have to do things for money that you might not ordinarily have done, like clickbait posts, cheesy sponsorship spots, selling interviews about family members, etc.

Understand that people watch for dysfunction, so that you can only become more famous if you begin to fall apart. If things are going well, your storyline is of no interest to viewers.

You're in trouble and have lost your way if find yourself making family decisions you wouldn't ordinarily make just to stay relevant and keep the gravy train going, such as having another baby.

Your morals start to slip. If you had children who became internet famous for their cute wholesomeness, but suddenly you're letting stylists, producers, publicists, and agents talk you into dressing them provocatively and using bad language, you're a sellout, and you're letting your kids down. Comes right back to vanity, pride, and greed.

The production crew being around you on a daily basis will get to know you family well. They will come to feel like family after a while. But make no mistake, these individuals are beholden to their employers at the end of the day.

Don't put trust in people you don't really know and let them have free access to your kids who will likewise trust them. Molestation is a real risk.

NDA's take away your right to free speech, your right to set the record straight and defend yourself.

You'd better not have a single skeleton in your closet, because it WILL be pulled out and magnified. Every mistep and mispoken word will be magnified.

Production will pit family members against one another for the sake of ratings, bet on it.

Editing will make you seem worse than you are, never better, unless making you better to make someone else look worse supports the narrative they're projecting.

You may say you're doing it to ensure your kids' financial future, but at what cost, and did they ask you to do that for them at a cost? They acquiesce because they're too young and inexperienced to know what the pitfalls and the dark side looks like.

Likewise, don't be pulled in by the opportunities afforded your family on the backs of production setting up scenarios for material. They aren't just sending you on a trip to New York or Hawaii so you can have a good time. They're sending you so they're there to capture it when you lose a kid boarding, a kid has a meltdown, there's an argument between you and your spouse because someone's behind schedule, or someone has an accident. They're not there to document you having a lovely, carefree week of down time. 

Social media channels are reality TV's wild cousin, just as insidious, but on steroids. The same downfalls, but it all happens faster.

Just because a few people on social media find your kids cute doesn't mean you need to turn those kids into commodities. Make no mistake, that's exactly what you're doing, nothing more and nothing less. You're pimping out your kids. You can call it whatever you want, but you're not fooling anyone.

Understand that people hope to see you falter. They are much more interested in seeing you stumble than in seeing you succeed.

If you want to wind up divorced, with a fractured family and kids who resent you, forge ahead.

If you just can't resist or pass up the opportunity to make some fast easy money by appearing on a reality show, and least have a plan going in, and stick to it. Agree on boundaries and refuse to let them be crossed. Get in, bank and invest, and get out quickly. Resist becoming a brand, don't even let that term and mindset take root in your consciousness. Recognize our natural, normal human frailties, vanity, pride, and greed. Protect yourself from yourself. It may not be you going in, but it can sneak up on you, and that will be you before you realize what's happening.

You're get to thinking of yourself as a celebrity on par with actors and other people with real talent. You are not on par, and don't kid yourself.

You will no longer be in control of your own reputation or image. You will become what the producers make you. You will be a thing, not a human being, so don't be surprised when you have to remind people that you have feelings and rights. In their minds, you do not, because you're sold that right for fleeting fame and cash in the bank. You're sold your privacy rights and your right to be who and what you choose without interference or input from others.

If you want to know how your kids can be impacted, there are already plenty of examples to be found, not just in reality show families who've already gone through it, but in the tragic life stories of kid actors. Addiction, estrangement, financial irresponsibility, mental instability, loss of sense of self and purpose in the aftermath of popularity, etc. These are all things that have befallen kids in the public eye again and again. Learn from it!

Tell-alls are nothing but a chance for producers to instigate and do damage to relationships just so they can profit from the ensuing fallout. Why would you subject yourself to such abuse? Why? Because you already agreed to upfront. You agreed before you knew how vicious, and money-driven uncaring these production companies could be. You believed their hype when they wooed you. But what can you say when you've in it for some of the same reasons they are? You're in bed with the devil, bedmates at this point, only they hold more power than you do because you signed yours away.

If you're constantly taking pics of yourself, always preoccupied with documenting your life through photos, always concerned about how to post, what to say and not say, always trying to keep up appearances, having to negotiate with your kids to create content, always trying to come up with ideas to stay relevant, you're in trouble. You're already gone to far.