Just over a decade ago, Alyson Stoner checked a bank account believing it would contain about a million dollars — the income they had earned, starting at age 7, from acting in TV shows and movies that now form the bedrock of millennial nostalgia, including “Camp Rock,” “Step Up” and “Cheaper by the Dozen.”

Instead, it was empty.

With a sinking feeling, Mx. Stoner, who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, set off to solve the mystery of what had happened to a decade and a half of paychecks and royalties.

Mx. Stoner and their older sister began untangling years of records. In the process, Mx. Stoner said they learned that their business team had mismanaged their finances over the course of their career, including excessive gifts for castmates and crew members and overpayments to contractors. Their mother had also been drawing an annual salary, as Mx. Stoner tells it, plus thousands of dollars in one-off payments, for years.

While Mx. Stoner was aware of the salary to their mother and various other payments, they did not understand the details of their finances until it was too late. They described it as “death by a thousand mishaps.”

Mx. Stoner met with a lawyer, but ultimately decided against legal action. “I still feel very protective,” said Mx. Stoner, 31, referring to their mother. “I know what it’s like to have my life exposed to the world. I don’t wish it on anyone.”

That did not stop Mx. Stoner from writing a new book about their life and career, one in which they tried to make sure that their mother felt “multidimensional” to readers and not like a villain. (The Times tried to reach their mother by phone and direct message for this article.)

It’s tricky choreography, even for a professional dancer.

“Categorically, it’s considered memoir, but it’s really an auto-ethnography,” Mx. Stoner said of their new book, “Semi-Well-Adjusted Despite Literally Everything,” out on Tuesday. They see it less as a “personal narrative” and more as a way to effect “system change,” they added.

That makes a certain amount of sense, considering that these days Mx. Stoner works as a mental health advocate and, occasionally, as a voice actor for Disney.

The book does not skimp on proper nouns. Mx. Stoner name-checks studios, castmates and industry titans. Bonnie Hunt? Motherly, on- and offscreen. Ellen DeGeneres? It’s not a flattering portrayal. Demi Lovato? A reputation for being physically violent and generally difficult to work with, Mx. Stoner writes. (In recent years, the two have since resolved their issues, Mx. Stoner said. Ms. Lovato declined to comment for this article.)

As an author, Mx. Stoner attempts a careful toeing of the line: They want to be revealing but not to be defined by their childhood experiences; they want to be dishy but to avoid burning bridges.

Come for the “childhood chaos,” stay for the “cultural critique,” they joked.

The ‘Childhood Chaos’

The book is in part of an emerging genre of tell-alls from former child stars or, as Mx. Stoner would prefer they be called, “child laborers.” Books like Mx. Stoner’s have become a familiar staging ground for a rebrand, or a comeback — usually by taking a scorched-earth approach to the industry and emphasizing the confessional.

In the last few years, audiences have been gripped by “I’m Glad My Mom Died,” Jennette McCurdy’s memoir about the abuse she suffered by her mother, and Demi Lovato’s revealing documentary “Child Star,” recounting her struggles with addiction, bulimia and anorexia and coming out as queer. The docuseries “Quiet on Set,” released last year, surfaced accounts of unsafe conditions for child stars who worked for Nickelodeon in the 1990s and 2000s.

Mx. Stoner was a major fixture in that scene. Some of their co-stars are now better known for their second and third acts, but Mx. Stoner is often still associated with the past.

They’re regularly picked out on the street and asked to do “the dance” — the routine they performed in the music video of Missy Elliott’s 2002 hit “Work It,” clad in a pink Baby Phat tracksuit and perky pigtails.

If they respond, they keep it cordial but try to make people see them for more than just “a single achievement,” they said.

This all usually takes place in Los Angeles, where Mx. Stoner still works, though they spend much of their time in the more private setting of their home near the Mojave Desert.

Monique Coleman, a friend of Mx. Stoner’s who best known for her role in “High School Musical,” said she had visited Mx. Stoner’s home during a difficult time in her life.

It was an emotional experience for Ms. Coleman, who described Mx. Stoner as the type of person who “shows up in a way that where you feel like you can let your guard completely down and show up unmasked.”

“I think a lot of times people depict performers as volatile and frenetic beings,” Mx. Stoner said on a recent afternoon over a bowl of curry and jasmine rice at a Thai restaurant in the North Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles. “I feel like a tree trunk.”

“Anna told me to use figurative language,” they added with a laugh, referring to Anna Akbari, the writing supervisor who worked with them on the memoir.

Its introduction includes a lengthy trigger warning and the number for a crisis hotline.

“The inner monologue throughout the book is actually often pulled from legitimate pages of my journal,” Mx. Stoner said.

In a recent video on Instagram, they flipped through a spiral notebook from their “Camp Rock” days, reflecting on how they felt on set. “I don’t know how to hang out or do small talk,” Mx. Stoner read. “Just focus on the work.”

In 2000, Mx. Stoner left their hometown Toledo, Ohio, for Los Angeles with their mother after the owner of a local modeling school whose claim to fame was discovering Katie Holmes suggested Mx. Stoner had a similar “spark.” Their father stayed behind, they write, kicking off a separation that would lead to over a decade of distance and minimal communication.

While the highs were high — an international music tour performing with Ms. Lovato and the Jonas Brothers, red carpets with Steve Martin — the lows were subterranean, Mx. Stoner writes. They call out Disney for filming on weekends to circumvent rules capping hours for children and have previously criticized the company for forcing the “Camp Rock” cast to work late into the night during inclement weather.

In an email, a representative for Disney wrote that leadership had changed since Mx. Stoner was a child and that while they could not comment on Mx. Stoner’s experiences specifically, those descriptions were not in line with the company policy.

At the time, Mx. Stoner found the fast pace of the industry “intoxicating,” describing the perpetual promise of chasing the next job that lead to a big break.

In a body-obsessed business, Mx. Stoner developed an eating disorder, exercising compulsively, tracking calories. In 2001, at 17, they checked into rehab. The “drastic shift in environment” helped Mx. Stoner start to see their life differently.

“I think that’s where I started to pull threads,” they said.

After a few months of treatment, they returned to work and booked an ABC pilot alongside Kirstie Alley. Their priorities, however, slowly began to shift. They paused auditioning for films to focus on making YouTube content and original music. Later, they would publicly come out as queer in Teen Vogue.

Those self-produced projects “felt more aligned,” Mx. Stoner said.

And then, in 2016, a dancer working on one of those projects said her paycheck from Mx. Stoner had bounced.

Trying to Change the Industry

After lunch, Mx. Stoner traded sky-blue trousers for a sweatshirt stowed in their car and drove to several hours to San Diego Comic Con to appear with their castmates from the animated series “Phineas and Ferb.”

Mx. Stoner voiced the character Isabella when the show debuted on Disney Channel in 2007. When Disney rebooted it this year, they signed back on.

It feels different this time around “because everyone is an adult and it is now more appropriate for us to be friendly with cast and crew who were much older than us,” Mx. Stoner said.

Aside from “Phineas” and a few other voice acting gigs, they have stepped away from the talent side of the business.

“The thought lingers,” they added of the idea of returning to acting. “But the further I am away from it, the greater the quality of my life and the more enthusiastic I am about showing up in a different location in the ecosystem, like as a coordinator or maybe a documentarian down the road.”

Mx. Stoner writes in the book that after years of on-set schooling, they did not meet the requirements to attend a traditional college.

Instead, they have completed a patchwork of mental health certifications, like a credential to be an onset mental health coordinator, a position they say will allow them to help in “bringing stories to life in the most compelling and ethical way.” Recently, Mx. Stoner said they helped a true crime podcast producer determine how to offer support to potential sources for the show.

Mx. Stoner hopes that over time mental health coordinators will become standard business practice, much like intimacy coordinators, whose job is to ensure sex scenes are safe and ethical.

As Mx. Stoner has moved into this new chapter, they have also been able to rekindle relationships with some of their family members. In 2020, they founded Movement Genius, a digital wellness platform that offers online classes, with their sister, Correy O’Neal. The company sells a $399 tool kit to help young artists and their parents navigate the industry. Mx. Stoner developed the kit with Cristi Williams, mother of the Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams.

Toward the end of “Semi-Well Adjusted Despite Literally Everything,” Mx. Stoner writes about returning home to Ohio after discovering their empty bank account. They felt lost, confused and needed answers. It was the first time they had meaningfully been in touch with their father in several years, Mx. Stoner said.

On that trip, Mx. Stoner said, their dad told them that he had wanted to be more present in their childhood, pulling out a stack of newspaper clippings and magazine articles he had saved for Mx. Stoner over the years.

“We’re very softly rekindling,” said Mx. Stoner, who added that they are also close with their nephews, Ms. O’Neal’s children.

When asked if they would ever encourage the young boys to pursue entertainment, Mx. Stoner shook their head no.

“Seeing their response to what they want for dinner, which is ‘I don’t know,’ is really eye opening,” Mx. Stoner said. “Knowing that when I was their age and someone asked, ‘do you want to get into this industry’ whether I said ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ or ‘I don’t know’ … I didn’t have a clue.”