SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA JOB MARKET: WORK AND FAMILY : SHORT STARS : Child performers can earn big money, but it isn’t all glitter.

Welcome to the world of children’s entertainment, where the stars are short and the stakes are high. Because in fact, while most doting parents tend to think their children are God’s gift to kindergarten, some kids are natural performers.

Talent agents call them “precocious.” Susie Scarlet of the Bobby Ball talent agency calls them “kids who can walk into a room with adults and start a conversation.”

But for the families of these pint-sized performers, it isn’t all glitter and glamour. For parents, there are often tremendous demands on their time and money, including countless trips to talent agents, studios and singing and dancing lessons. There are problems with jobs lost, missed school time, sibling jealousies, overblown egos and child psychologists.

Even so, the image of the stage-struck mother who lives for her tap-dancing daughter’s every step is still a reality in Hollywood.

Consider Edward Furlong, 14, glimpsed by a talent scout on a playground at the Boys’ Club in Pasadena in 1990. Without previous film experience, he went on to star opposite Arnold Schwarzenneger in “Terminator 2.”

Media psychologist Stuart Fischoff says parents of child actors face some of the same issues as parents of any child heavily involved in an activity, whether it be music, sports or acting. On the other hand, “It’s a quantum leap from being on the school basketball team to getting on TV and being seen by 30 million people,” he says.

But the fame that comes from being seen by millions of people creates its own problems.

“Sometimes when the child is the fiduciary pot of gold, parents are afraid to set bounds for them; they’re buck-whipped by their own children,” Fischoff says. “Without an internalization of the values and norms of society, a child can develop a distorted, grandiose sense of self.”

How does 11-year-old McCauley Culkin, for instance, keep his young feet firmly planted on the ground after a runaway hit film like “Home Alone,” which has grossed about $280 million. Culkin reportedly now commands a couple million dollars a picture.

Jackpot success stories like Culkin’s have not gone unnoticed by Middle America. Indeed, one of Hollywood’s seasonal rituals is families from across the country--photogenic kids in tow--flocking like migrating birds to Los Angeles during the TV pilot season.

It can be tough on families, especially if one parent takes the child to Hollywood while the other remains behind with siblings. “I’ve got Michigan clients who are putting their marriage on hold to do this,” Scarlet says.

Those within driving distance make pilgrimages as well--although what’s considered a reasonable drive may vary widely. “I know clients from Bakersfield who’ll drive in for a two-minute audition . . .,” says manager and former acting instructor Linda Goodfriend. “One woman wanted to bring her kid in from near Yosemite. That’s a six-hour drive!”

Aside from their role as chauffeurs, parents are typically the major players in their children’s careers. As legal managers, they secure agents, handle contracts and deposit checks. And while most won’t go as far as the homemaker who tried to have her neighbor murdered because her daughter didn’t make the cheerleading team, stage parenthood can still sometimes rear its ugly head.

“Parents sometimes get panicky,” Goodfriend says. “They start sensing that everything is ultra-important. I get these midnight phone calls, ‘What should my child wear tomorrow?’ The kid does a one-hour print job, and the parents go crazy. . . . For some mothers, I think, this is their dream; they don’t have any other focus.”

Goodfriend advises parents to relax a bit. An attitude of “we’ll audition and then go get brownies” is healthier and “those kids always do much better in the long run.”

It’s a long process--and opportunities in the entertainment industry have certainly been hurt by the recession--but there are success stories.

What’s especially heartening is that a child doesn’t have to be a household word to earn a good living. It’s not unusual for a successful child actor to earn more than $100,000 a year just from commercials.

Take 14-year-old Christopher Allport, a local boy who at age 9 was spotted at a musical comedy workshop in Hollywood. Allport does a lot of voice-overs and looping (filling in lost dialogue or sounds lost in the film-editing process.) He’s the voice of “Tootles,” a character in Fox’s animated series “Peter Pan and the Pirates.”

In a good year, his mother Pam Allport estimates that he earns enough to pay for a four-year education at Harvard. But it’s work. Pam’s voice is weary as she describes it:

“People really do not have any idea what it takes. You have to have a full wardrobe ready at all times because you never know what they have to be seen in.”

Beyond that, there is “the book work to keep up with--the accounting, the resumes . . . keeping those updated. You send out postcards with their picture on it announcing different things they’re in--a TV show or local play--to the casting people that you’ve seen so that they remain in their mind. Often it’s more than a 40-hour week.”

And the family must be willing to make sacrifices. “What happens when you finally get a four-day vacation break? You leave Friday, and you have to turn around Saturday and come back because some job has come in,” Allport says.

Public school posed other problems. “I feel that teachers know approximately what the children are making, and they resent it. In Chris’ case, they wouldn’t give him assignments or books. . . . It turned into a real nightmare.” Christopher is now in private school.

Another child actor, Jorel Katcher, 7, supports himself and his mother, Linda, by doing mostly commercial work. Natives of Tennessee, theirs is the classic story of Linda loading up the car and driving to Los Angeles in search of fame.

Actually, Jorel’s success was not a total fluke: He’d done catalogue modeling for Saks Fifth Avenue and Spiegel since he was 18 months old.

To hear Linda Katcher, a former flight attendant, tell it, coming to Los Angeles was eminently practical.

“At 3 1/2, Jorel could earn more money than I could--especially given that I’m a single parent. It sounds crazy, but this is the only way I’ve been able to stay home with my child. This way, Jorel has all my time and love. We have the weekends to go bicycling and have fun. If I were working full time, I’d be too exhausted to do that.”

Currently, Jorel’s resume is a whirl of popular products: Parkay margarine, Citrus Hill orange juice, Olympus cameras, Pepto Bismol, Midas Muffler, Mattel, McDonald’s, LA Gear.

Recently, Linda moved Jorel to a new agency--whose clients include Fred Savage, star of TV’s “The Wonder Years”--in hopes of landing more auditions for TV and film roles.

Ultimately, experts say that parents of talented children should keep one critical point in mind: The drive to perform or excel comes from the child.

Advises talent manager Goodfriend: “Don’t try to put them into show business unless the child begs.”