Interesting effect of family photography on your children - my own experience
On every holiday card, we as a family showed photos of our kids only. Our excuse was, 1) It would be a production just to take photos of kids, not to speak of getting ready to look decent as parents 2) just out of pure laziness (brutally honest here : ). But this year, I took a leap and we actually did studio style holiday photos, and we ended up with below:
We used a self-timer, and after a few practices we got into the groove. Below were used as a collage in the back.
Of course just like at your household, we were under such time pressure and faced resistance from our kids. But 10 minutes into it, everyone started enjoying it, almost like a casual photo booth.
And as a result, for the first time in our family history, my high school daughter was really excited about our holiday cards and immediately wanted to send them out to her own friends and started collecting their addresses. It was actually heartwarming and refreshing to see her being so excited about photos of her with her parents. Our middle school daughter was completely indifferent as usual, but middle school age kids are vastly different in terms of self-consciousness in my opinion, so hopefully she will warm up to the idea in the future. So here we were, without realizing, we started a family tradition of (goofy) holiday card photos : ) And my high school daughter actually sent them out to friends, and in return, we received cards from new families we enjoyed getting to know through their beautiful holiday cards!
This was 100% positive experience for our family and nothing negative. And my own photo experience is, you do get used to seeing how you look, even though you don’t look exactly as you hoped. It’s very interesting, but it gives you so much feeling of achievement it doesn’t matter how your hair is a failure or your choice of clothing wasn’t perfect, or you don’t look like 28 any more!
We parents are all very self-conscious and keep postponing family photography and tell ourselves, “One day, I will lose 10 pounds and get this perfect dress and shoes, and will be in photos” but kids don’t care. So the point is, kids would love to see their parents in family photos too, regardless of how you feel about it, let alone how you look, because your are their mom and dad. You are a very special existence for them.
Plus, we are not younger, are we?
I don’t want to make this post preachy but here is a study about positive effects of family photos displayed in your home on children. David Krauss, a licensed psychologist from Cleveland, Ohio says, “I think it is really important to show a family as a family unit. It is so helpful for children to see themselves as a valued and important part of that family unit. A photographer’s job is to create and make the image look like a safe holding space for kids where they are safe and protected. Kids get it on a really simple level.”
Krauss is one of the earliest pioneers in using people’s personal photography and family albums to assist in mental health counseling and therapy. He co-authored “Photo Therapy and Mental Health” in 1983 that is considered a founding text for the use of photography in therapy.
“Family photos let children learn who they are and where they fit,” says Judy Weiser. a psychologist, art therapist and author based in Vancouver. “They learn their genealogy and the the uniqueness of their own family and its story. When a child sees a family portrait with them included in the photograph they say to themselves: ‘These people have me as part of what they are, that’s why I belong here. This is where I come from.”
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