Is it Your Fault?

It might be (it also might not be!).

The truth you might need to hear, but don’t want to acknowledge.

“I hate having my photo taken”
“Ew delete that I look awful”
“Can you slim me down so I don’t look fat”
“Don’t take my photo, I hate how I look”
“Can you take one where you can’t see my teeth”

These are all things that we’ve heard you say. More worryingly, these are things that we have heard people say around their children.

Then they ask us to photograph their children, who in turn don’t want to be photographed.

Are you seeing a connection? We are.

More and more, we are seeing children who don’t want to be photographed and often, it’s down to one of two things. Before you go any further, this isn’t always the case and this isn’t a case of blame – we’re letting you in on our observations as professionals, and as friends, we’re hoping that you can see this and use the tools available to you to protect your children from the self loathing they could potentially be developing.

One

The old adage “monkey see, monkey do”. You can be guaranteed that if you swear in front of your child, they’re going to come out with the odd word or two. You can also be guaranteed that if your children hear that you don’t like having your photograph taken, they’re going to parrot that until they believe that they hate it too. If they hear you say that you’re fat and hate how you look, what are you teaching them?

Two

Over-photographing. You love your children, you want to document every moment, every event, every expression. We get it. You want the photos you take of your little angels to look how you perceive them – smiling and perfect, so you force them to stand there, force them to put an arm around their sibling or hold their hand and instruct them in no uncertain terms to look at the camera/phone and smile or say “cheese”. It’s a lot. Try to change the narrative. Photograph them as they are, doing what they’re doing, looking at whatever they’re looking at and if you need them to smile, give them cause to laugh! Give them a reason to smile! Fart jingle bells, do a silly fake sneeze or bop yourself on the head with an empty kitchen roll tube. A little bit of comedy goes a long way.

Now, the problems that you have getting photographs of your children may be down to other factors and not down to either of these things, but pause for a moment and think about whether or not these might be the issue and if they are, you’ve got the power to change that.

Be who your children already believe you to be – the perfect parent, who loves them and who they will always want to look back on photographs of. Don’t be the one missing from the photos, one day those photographs will be all that they have and being present in family photographs is the best future gift that you can give to them.