Xavier Santiago is twelve, and he entered his first modeling and talent competition at eight and came home with nothing. Not a placement, not a single category. This is the story of what he did next, and of the four years that turned that weekend into a runner-up on an international stage. It is a good story to read with any child who is scared to try again after losing, and a look at what raising a resilient child really takes. Behind every icon is a parent who believed first. Iconic Glam Kids Editorial
Xavier Santiago was the child the doctors had told his mother she would not have. He arrived anyway, and two daughters followed him. He describes his job in the family, without hesitation, as their protector. He was twelve when we ran his back cover in May 2025, and the list of things he had already done was longer than most adults’ resumes. What we keep coming back to, though, is not the list. It is how the list started.
Keep reading
Read the full story, free
Our stories come from the pages of Iconic Glam Kids®. Add your name and email to keep reading this one, and the ones still to come.
Thank you. You’re on the list.
Get every new issue with the Digital Library
First-year rates, billed yearly ($36 for Reader, $60 for Member). Cancel online anytime. Compare plans
Already subscribed? Enter your name and email above to keep reading.
His path began in 2020, when he signed up for modeling and acting classes. His first competition was an annual model and talent event, and he did not win a single category. No placement. Nothing to take home. Most children stop there. Xavier went back the next year, and the year after that, and kept going.
I am a miracle baby because my mom was told she could not have children. When she found out I was conceived, it was a blessing for our family.
Xavier, age twelve
A Moment for Parents
We share these features for more than the child at the center of them. Each one carries a question for the rest of us who are raising kids of our own.
Your child works toward their first competition, walks in full of hope, and comes home with nothing at all. It is the moment many families decide the whole thing was a mistake, and steer the child toward something gentler. Xavier’s family did the opposite. They let him go back. Would you have found your child an easier hobby, or let them walk back into the room that beat them?
More Than a Runway
Once he kept going, the work started to find him. A photographer submitted a shoot he appeared in to a magazine, and Xavier was in the October 2021 issue. Another editorial followed the next autumn. In August 2023, at eleven, he was on Fox 29 in a back to school segment. He competed at the International Model and Talent Association, a week long marathon of swimwear, high fashion, commercial print and monologues, and finished as first runner-up in nearly every category he entered. He returned in 2024 to a tougher field and again came home as first runner-up for Model. That September he won his division at a New York fashion show, walking casual wear, swimwear and evening wear.
Then a group of film students cast him as Kareem in their television pilot, the mischievous brother of the lead character. Xavier, who is the obedient one at home, kept thinking about that role long after the cameras stopped. The cast taught him two things he did not arrive with. He learned to whistle. He learned to snap his fingers. He still brings both out at family dinners. Acting, he told us, is where he found the part of himself that wants to be in a series like Stranger Things or Cobra Kai, and he is auditioning for it.
The rest of his week is just as full. He plays basketball for his school’s Owls and wants to be as great as Cristiano Ronaldo on a soccer field. He has trained in Taekwondo since he was five, when he started in the program for little tigers, and he earned his second degree black belt last year. Taekwondo, in his own words, taught him patience, discipline, and the value of hard work. Asked what superpower he would choose, he did not pick flying or invisibility. He would pick the ability to fix and clean the environment. The boy wants to remove the pollution.
The child who keeps showing up after losing his first competition is the child you want on the runway four years later.
Iconic Glam Kids Editorial
Behind Every Little Star
Every shining child has a story, and a guiding light behind them. Here are the ideas Xavier’s family leans on.
What raising a resilient child really takes
Be the biggest supporter, and keep it joyful. His mother’s whole approach is to stand behind him and protect the joy of it. The gigs come and go, she says. The joy is the part he will remember about being twelve.
Never let it overshadow being a kid. Modeling should enhance a child’s confidence, not pressure it. Her rule is simple: it does not get to crowd out the other parts of his life, and he still gets to be a kid.
Always be himself. No matter what paths he takes or what people may say, the lesson she most wants him to keep is to stay true to who he is. Honoring your own values, in her words, is the greatest strength there is.
Draw it, little star
Draw something you tried that did not go the way you hoped. Then, right next to it, draw yourself trying it one more time. Underneath, write the one small thing you would do differently. That second picture is the whole story of how Xavier got from losing everything at his first competition to a runner-up on an international stage.
From the Editor’s Desk
There is a piece of Positive Discipline in Xavier’s story worth holding onto. Children do not learn resilience from winning. They learn it from being allowed to lose, and then being trusted to try again. A first competition that ends with nothing is not a failure a parent needs to shield a child from. It is the exact place where perseverance is built, as long as an adult stays beside them and treats the loss as information rather than a verdict. The work of a parent here is less about protecting a child from disappointment and more about staying in the room while the child decides, on their own, to go back.
Our hope is that these pages help a family recognize the strength that is one day truly the child’s own, and stand beside it while it is still forming. Not performance, but presence.
It always seems impossible until it is done.
Nelson Mandela
ICONIC GLAM KIDS | XAVIER SANTIAGO | AGE 12 | Photograph by Diane Zhao
Xavier Santiago was featured in Iconic Glam Kids, the magazine for children and the parents who believe in them first.
Behind every icon is a parent who believed first.