Here's another question:
Just prior to our son starting to sell his photos, he said his goal was 100 photos sold/$2000 in sales. I sort of chuckled (you've seen his photos, Marc, so you know why) and said, "Yeah, right. You do that and I'll let that Washington Post woman interview you." There's this journalist who interviewed Haley Joel Osment and has been wanting to interview David. I explained that I saw no reason for him to be in the press - that if he had a movie, book, invention, or whatever to plug, then I could understand him being in the press, but not just for being a young kid in college or winning contests (and we've let him enter rather few of those as we don't like competitions and awards/rewards and the like in general). She has emailed from time to time asking if David was selling anything yet, but hasn't emailed in the last few months, which I've considered a blessing.
But our son has been asking why I am not coming through on my promise, and while I explained that I made the promise without really giving it proper thought (same way he got to go to college early, but that's another long story), and had since reconsidered and didn't feel comfortable about his being in the paper for his photos. Now with his doing the fair, though, I half think it would be a reasonable story that could help his business, and as our son gets older, I don't have quite as much paranoia about some weirdo reading about him in the paper and following him around (though maybe I should as that happened with a 15 year old college kid we know locally). or worse.
So do you think we should allow that woman to interview him if she still wants? The whole media thing has been one of the big drawbacks to having a kid who attracts media attention in what he does, especially as our son has always loved people knowing who he is and his parents have never liked strangers knowing him or us. At age 8, he was on a White House/Smithsonian Millennium Celebration panel demonstating a Lego Mindstorms invention and another panel giving his ideas for science and technology for the next millennium, and we signed this contract about how any events could be covered on TV as my husband thought surely that only applied to big acts related to the event like the New Year's Eve show on the mall and he didn't want us making a fuss by crossing out lines we were uncomfortable with. The very day we were to leave for D.C., we learned that both panels would be C-SPAN live. I nearly died, but comforted myself by thinking, "Who the heck will be turning into *C-SPAN* on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day anyway?" But about 8 months later, some stranger in a pizza place asked my son, "Hey, I remember you. You were demonstrating an invention on C-SPAN awhile back, weren't you? Isn't your name (and he gave the FULL NAME!)?" I nearly fainted and was so glad we never let our son do Oprah or some big time TV stint.
But the media decisions are ones we will never know if we were right about turning down (or for the few we've allowed, accepting). I remember when our son first met the scholarship woman on campus and she was saying that if we accepted a scholarship, it meant we'd have to sign something saying they could use his name all they wanted in the media (which it turned out wasn't true, but that's another long story still), and I explained that I was completely uncomfortable with that - just seemed very unethical to me. My son asked why I was so against his being in the media, and I explained to him for the umpteenth time (for a quick learner, he refuses to learn on this count) that allowing the media into your life is just opening up a can of worms. Without blinking an eye, the kid said, "But, Mom, you know what happens when you open a can of worms, don't you? You catch fish! Think of all the opportunities I could have if you just let me be in the media!" At the time, the kid had more opportunities than he knew what to do with, but that has changed over the years (in part due to another early to college kid having a mother who falsified his IQ and SAT scores and drove the kid to a mental breakdown at age 8, but that is yet another long story, but the story on that kid ran on the same page as a the write up for a conference our son was to be a presenter the following year and his offer was rescinded). One kid has parents who really market him (he was getting $7-10K per talk and doing several talks a month if not a week at age 10 or so) and it *has* paid off in some major ways (Nobel Prize nominations at ages 12 and 13, $300K graduate school scholarship even when the kid had under a 3.5 GPA from a second tier college, etc.), so I wonder if my husband and I are doing our son a disservice in keeping him out of the media as much as we can. We don't want him to have nuts who read about him out to get him (as has happened with the Nobel Prize nomination kid, but the college provided him a security guard!) nor for his life to be tough with total strangers expecting fantastic things from him (though this happens even without his being in the press) nor his privacy to be lost, but we also don't want to deprive him of opportunities.
Very tough call and if anyone has feedback on whether we should allow him to be interviewed over his photography business or not, I'd be happy to get the input.
And as for the parents having their children in the media to stroke their own egos, it makes little sense to me as whatever the kids are doing is *the kid's* achievement not the parents (at least with us, it's the case; I taught our son to tie his shoe, but he taught himself most everything else prior to college, and I don't think a few minutes spent teaching a kid to tie a shoe should count for much, frankly). And honestly, the contrast is hard to deal with as before our son came into lives, I never had to deal with people thinking *I* must be super smart (or at least, I had less of this as it came mostly from things like my parents and brother being smart, and people don't ask, "Oh, did your brother get his intellect from you?"), and it's somewhat embarrassing when people ask, "Did he learn to play the piano from you?" when all you can play is chopsticks or "Did he get his eye for photography from you?" when you've hardly ever taken a shot that didn't have people in it as a memory of some vacation or the like. Heck, I can't even swim - he picked that up when at the pool at camp. And I had a real issue for years with how quickly people started identifying me as "David's mother" instead of using my own name (heck, I still have it a bit!). My son and I are link ying and yang - I am the bum with no talent but who is nonetheless a happy soul and he is the one who achieves without much trying who is happy nonetheless (as most believe you can't be happy if you aren't working hard to achieve, my son is also a bit different from the norm).
Sorry these posts are so long!
But you have every right to be proud, he sounds like an extraordinary young man. My guess is it won't matter much what he charges - just start low, then go higher the more attention he draws. He seems gifted in all the right ways, so he's already well ahead of the game. 
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