Sister threw DS out of the photo

[HellMc]

My DS (10) has always pulled silly faces in photos, he’s done it since he was a toddler. We tried getting him to stop but it’s like he can’t help himself so we just got on with it. We assumed if we didn’t make a fuss out of it he’s grow out of it but he didn’t. All of his school photos have silly faces etc and now we just laugh. The only photos we have of him not doing a silly face are the natural ones he didn’t know we were taking.

Anyway yesterday me, DS, sister, her kids and my other sisters son went on a day out a national heritage site. Sister wanted a group photo of all the kids so they all stood together in front of the ruins. Sister then said to DS “either stop pulling faces or stand over there out of the photo” 😱 it came as a shock as everyone was laughing at him initially and then she suddenly got mad. I told her I thought she was being a bit harsh and she said “sorry but I’ve been trying to take a nice photo of them all all day for mum and he’s ruined every one so far”.

I told DS to just this once not pull a face but he continued doing so so sister told him to get out of shot. She then took the photo of the other kids and said “there, finally mum will have a photo for her wall”.

so I said mum would want all the kids together so she said “actually, mum told me to take the pic without your ds if he insisted on pulling a face, she was annoyed with the last lot of photos I took her because he’d ruined them all.

I feel hurt, not just about my sister but also what my mum (his grandma!) has clearly been saying!!

AIBu to feel hurt at DS being excluded from a family photo that is destined for my mums wall??

Your husband was right, about the passport photos. Your badly behaved son doesn’t need a reward for behaving. He needs a natural consequence for not behaving. Ie no photos when he asks, no nice trips if you can’t get nice photos. Stop laughing at it, be consistent. He’ll stop. He’s doing it because he thinks it’s funny. He thinks it’s funny because you’ve led him to believe that.

@ThanksItHasPockets wow, I’m the sanctimonious one?! I think you need to examine your intentions on this thread.

I wonder what it is about threads like this that really push peoples buttons. Everyone seems very angry at the OP. I agree with the advice, but some of the way it's been offered up has been unkind.

‘Wow’.

Now THAT’S passive-aggressive bingo.

It's horrible, it really is.

I give it an hour before this thread disappears for ‘not being in the spirit’. I hope @MNHQ don’t hang about as it’ll get picked up by the press.

My nephew does this. Now, when I’m taking photos, I ask him to pull all sorts of faces for the first ones- scary, cross, silly, scared etc., then I ask for happy, and he does it. It’s really not a problem with a camera phone, or digital camera because I can just delete the daft ones.

Having photos taken is embarrassing for some people, so they compensate.

It’s going to be even more of an issue for him now- poor kid.

It's already happened.

My mother (in her late 70s now) has done similar, OP, ever since her schooldays, She sticks her tongue out whenever a family photo is taken, and it has literally got to the point of her being airbrushed from days out/family celebrations. I don't have one single photo of my parents and my children together, unless they're all walking with their backs to me, Even on her wedding day, my mother stuck her tongue out in the official portraits.

She says its a defence mechanism, but she has no idea why.

Well, that defence mechanism has resulted in her being airbrushed to the point where my descendents may never know what she looks like. Perhaps ask your son if this is the future he wants for himsef, before it becomes engrained habit.

Don't advertise your shit, lazy and abusive parenting. I'll have a child who pulls silly faces in photos over a meatheaded, slap-happy adult any day. If you can't communicate except through pain and violence, you've got no right to complain about a child who can't communicate except by gurning. You have nothing to contribute except a fine example of what not to do.

If this happened
yanbu, Why did Sister rub it in with those sharp comments ("finally", "ruined" etc). Why didn't she take a bunch of photos with and without the funny face kid, & let the gran choose which one to display without trying to make OP's kid feel bad in the moment.

The gran can choose the one without funny face if she prefers. She will have to enjoy the rarer treat of the actual person not their picture, If that's her choice it's her choice.

I have a DC who always pulls a face but nobody cares. Except he didn't recently, he produced a brilliant smile when he got selfie with a local celeb.

My mother would have (did have) size A2 pictures of each grandchild solo on her walls. My dad says his home is too small to have barely any family pictures on display, maybe a few 3x5s. MIL only displays picture of herself with her own adult sons, not the grandchildren. DH's dad I doubt he displayed any pictures of his grandchildren, not that interested. I probably don't understand what other people think is grandparent desirability for picture display, but it seems to be a range. No need to be unpleasant about what is possible.

Because while we all see irritating, permissive parents in the wild - "Oh, look darling, Tallulah Grace is expressing her artistic flair all over the cafe walls!" - it's very rare that they are so utterly clueless as to make a thread describing in detail their child's irritating behaviour and their apparent bafflement at other people not tolerating it.

It's hilariously oblivious.

Fuck me, some of you are very weird. 😳

The idea that if someone isn’t smiling beatifically for the camera then they’re automatically ‘spoiling the photo’.

Are you all really that shallow that everyone must look a certain way for family pictures?

Why can’t OP’s son be himself and pull faces? He’s 10 FGS!

I find it incredibly sad that so many of you have such rigid ideas that instead of capturing someone’s personality, you’d rather they look uniformly bland and uninspiring.

A few have commented about what might happen when the OP’s son gets married. Well maybe he won’t bother having any wedding photos because surprisingly, they’re not mandatory. I have no photos from my wedding because I didn’t want any, as I find them cringey at best.

I missed this, I didn't realise he is TEN!!!

And you can't have a nice photo of a ten year old without treats OP??

YABU

It would not be hard at all just to airbrush out the tongue and straighten the rest of the face a bit. It may not be the greatest likeness ever but it'll be recognisable as her.

If she's still doing it in her 70s and did it in your wedding photos, she's clearly not just doing it for shits and giggles. Like the OP's son, there's some psychological reason.

Your mother wouldn't have had the advantages we have now, but I'm sure a trained expert could help the boy to work out and somehow communicate why he does this, in a way that shouting, punishment and even hitting him is unlikely to do.

See, there's another one. "It's just my child's beautiful personality! Their very essence! Good behaviour is uninspiring!"

Or perhaps the people who 'airbrushed her out' should take a long hard look at themselves and what's important to them. Your mum didn't fit their mold so she's written out of the history books. How shallow.

This thread has made me remember, my stepmum(!!) used to pull stupid faces in photos. She seemed to enjoy doing it to ruin other people’s occasions - I remember DSis getting her graduation photos back and there she was, gurning away in every single one.

Naturally she managed a nice smile for her own wedding photos. And her own daughter’s wedding. Funny that.

I'll assume you don't holiday abroad and need a passport?

Oh please 😂 gurning in photos isn’t ‘being yourself’, neither is farting loudly in class. It’s silly attention seeking behaviour.

I'm puzzled as to why OP's son does this. But I'm more puzzled as to why so many posters are so angry about it. It's very annoying, especially the school pictures, but the level of vitriol pouring forth about it, with wild and ridiculous supposition about his birth order, name calling and even suggestions to strike him over it, are beyond all proportion to what he's actually doing.

Some people don't feel much value in photos, you appear to be one of them. That doesn't mean everyone else is wrong and shallow.

Personally I wouldn't mind if someone just wasn't smiling in a photo, but silly faces do spoil it. You just want to see their faces as they are, not contorted into something ridiculous. My DSS doesn't just pull silly faces, he pulls the most hideous faces he can.

It's just not what you want, and when you've asked someone lots of times not to do it (including at times it was crucial like the passport photo, but even without these incidents) it also reminds you of the defiance around it and them refusing to listen, making it doubly annoying.

Read OPs posts. Kid messed them up and got a scolding from dad after mummy's attempts at offering toys didn't work 😆

It’s not the 1970s where there are only 24 photos on a film and it takes two weeks to get them developed. Your son was dicking about so he he got cancelled from this photo. There will be a gazillion other photo ops.

I think its because children who won't do as they're asked by adults making perfectly reasonable and age appropriate requests are extremely frustrating. They're the children who spoil things for others. It's one thing when the parent acknowledges that its an issue and at least attempts to manage it. But parents who can't see a problem and won't support other adults who do are annoying in the extreme.
Most of us have met a child who has to be silly, who won't do as they're asked, and found their company unpleasant. That's sad for the child and unfair on those around them.
Perhaps the OPs son is great in every other way and this does him and OP a disservice. But there's something about his disobedience over this minor thing, and OPs inability to see it was wrong that suggests otherwise.