Hello! New to boards and appealing for your help!

[Journalist Juliet]

Hi everyone, I'd just like to introduce myself

As my username suggests, I'm called Juliet and I'm a journalist - well, not a real one yet but I'm a 22-year-old student studying for an MA in Newspaper Journalist at Nottingham Trent University. So no, I'm not a mum or a performing child but I'm here to try and find out more...

I'm writing my dissertation on child performers, focussing particularly on the relationship they have with their parents. I aim to investigate the feelings involved and the difficulties for both parties in striving to succeed. I was overjoyed to find this website, as one of my aims is to address the whole 'pushy mum' stigma, and I really hope that this website and forum will help me in this.

I have 2 main questions:
1. Would I be permitted to use comments made on the forum in my dissertation? Owing to the nature of the internet, anything published online can be seen by anyone anyway, and also, everyone has a degree of anonymity through being identified by username alone. Nevertheless, I want to be completely open and make sure I get permission for anything I use.

2. Is there anyone here who would be willing to be a MASSIVE help to me, by giving me an interview? Please send me a PM with any questions or conditions you have and I will give you all the information you want. If all sounds ok, we can discuss it further (but don't worry, absolutely no obligation!)

I would like to make some topics of my own later on, asking questions that I'm interested in researching. I hope that all of this is ok, and I will really appreciate your help.

Thanks so much for reading!

[pg]

Hello there and welcome!

You are right about what we write here as being visible to everyone but I applaud you for asking permission to use what you read here. Perhaps you could address your questions directly to admin and/or the moderators? From my own point of view, you're welcome to quote anything I write!

I would also be very happy to answer questions for an interview though my experience might not be exactly what you need as my children are now grown up. Neither did very much professional work when they were younger either - although they were always performing somewhere! My son is now a professional actor and my daughter is training at RWCMD. I'm a professional actor, though I only started working professionally in recent years. If you think any of my experiences would be of interest then ask away! Hopefully, you'll also have some other volunteers with more recent experience of being parents of young performers.

[Dawn]

Hi & Welcome

Also happy to help if you have anything specific. You may also want to read the book "Stage Mum" written by one of our established members. It is a brilliant reflection on what it is like to be the parent of a young performer and documents the trials and tribulations of the audition process for a west end show which many members on here have also got experience of.

Good luck

Dawn .x.

[Journalist Juliet]

Thanks a lot pg and Dawn, it's lovely to be welcomed

pg, you're right in that I'm really looking for mums with young children currently going to auditions etc. I'm hoping that the webmasters will reply to my e-mail soon.

In the meantime, I'm still looking for mums with young children that might be willing to be interviewed - preferably in person, but through e-mail could also be be very useful. A huge thank you to those who have come forward so far

[fabmum]

Hi Juliet

Welcome again and I can only restress what PG and Dawn have said - you are more than welcome to use anything I've written! We're happy to be interviewed, though my ds is nearly 14 so he may not be young enough? If he is, let me know and I'll send you a pm.

[Journalist Juliet]

For those who haven't already sent me a PM, I now have my interview questions ready (for my dissertation/feature research) and have sent them to several members who have volunteered to help.

There are 15 questions in all, but it's not essential that all of them are answered and they shouldn't take up too much of your time. Hopefully, you will even find them quite interesting and fun to answer - and by doing so, you would really be doing me the greatest favour and your child could get some extra media exposure (if you want)!

If I haven't yet sent them to you, but you think you might be able to help, please either send me a PM or reply here and I will send you the questions (it's easiest to send them over e-mail)

Thank you so much to all who volunteer!