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??

Surely an important part of parenting is to teach your kids the difference between individuality and self centredness.

A child constantly spoiling photographs or dancing and prancing around people when they don't like it (as per another thread) is not being quirky and individual. They're behaving with a complete lack of awareness and parents need to sort this out.

In both these examples an aunt eventually lost patience and the mother became defensive and hurt. But they should have been teaching their child to pick up cues and basically read the room and develop an understanding of how to behave in different situations.

But then some probably react like the charmless poster above who will just decide that anyone who isn't prepared to put up with 'oh I'm quirky I am' behaviour should just 'bore off'.

Ok everyone, stop it. He is a child. Live and let live. What's everyone smoking today?

He's WAY more than old enough not to do it.

YABVU

but it’s like he can’t help himself

He can, but you've always indulged him. That's why he continues this behaviour.

We have a family member who does this and he’s now a young teen. It annoys all his relatives to no end. I think he thinks it’s funny, it isn’t. No one is laughing.

I’m afraid I don’t think ignoring it is working. I think his Grandma should be able to have a nice photo of her grandchildren without funny faces. Time for him to stop.

My DS is a bit like this. He just finds photos really awkward and doesn' seem to know what to do with his face.

He's a really cute kid (if I do say so myself) and photographs really well if caught naturally. We've been approached by a modelling agency who were eager to test him but he would have hated it.

Nothing we do or say seems to change it, unfortunately. He's not so much pulling silly faces, he just makes a weird face whilst trying to make a photo face!

If your last comment was targeted at me, then please know that I would 100% rather be 'charmless' than staid and intolerant, especially when we're talking about tolerating the 'quirks' of a child.

Teach him to say CHEESE and he will smile.

Many people manage to be neither.

My ds10 also does this. Its his chosen pose for pictures, so I prefer that look to any forced smile. My dh looks like he's really angry in pictures, I wouldn't throw him out of a family picture.

Why anyone wants a load of smiling clones is beyond me!

Yes, in a self mocking way, that people can be pfb when their kids are little and look back and cringe and laugh at themselves later on. When they realise how daft they were being as parents at the time.

It's not serious.

This kid is 10, too old for pfb indulgence.

The other children are not clones. They each have their own personalities, which at the moment can't shine through in a group photo because everyone's eyes are drawn to the child pulling a stupid face.

Most posts here are at the extreme. Either horrible insults thrown at the boy, or people saying he should do as he likes because no-one else matters.
Neither is right. There's a middle ground where his problem with photos are addressed with empathy and strategies, and other people considered.

Granny deserves to be able to talk about all her grandchildren in the photo when a friend asks, not just the derailment of “oh my, well HE’S a little character isn’t he!”

Honestly I think your son is getting the brunt end of people's, including your mum and sister, anger at you for not disciplining your kid. You just shouldn't be laughing when your kid is messing about.
Is this really the only thing or is he a bit of a joker all round?

You claimed she wasn't called an annoying prick

She was

Facts

Some practica advice ?l(from someone who’s child went through a phase of a grin like an axe murderer!!) distractions was key for us, instead use a silly phrase/ saying that gives a different focus- ‘silly sausages shaped like cheese on the moon’ the actual words not important- but he has to say them for every photo and briefly forgets the face pulling.

But I think your Mum is out of order if she'd rather your son not be in the picture, than have one with him in being silly. I mean, he's 10, not 20, and it's just his tongue, not his middle finger. And he's her grandson.

She's obviously already got loads of those photos, though. She'd like to have one where he's not doing this and that isn't the focal point of the picture.

You are being unreasonable. Your DC is showing disrespect by not listening to you when you asked him to stop pulling faces.

all your sister wanted was a nice photo.

Twat not test

@Hesma

Always one twat in the family I guess. 😂

I’m not sure why the need to be rude with ‘bore off.’ I don’t mean if you pull silly faces in photos you can’t be included in non-photo taking events. What I mean is if you choose to exhibit specific behaviours which negatively effect specific elements of social events for others it’s understandable you might sometimes not be included. If the normal societal norm you can’t follow is to smile nicely in a photo at least some of the time then it’s surely expected that on the occasions somebody wants to take a photo of people nicely smiling you won’t be included because your behaviour is stopping the person from being able to take the type of photo they want and ruining it for them. That’s reasonable. If the normal social behaviour you couldn’t follow was, for example, not blowing someone else’s birthday candles out to be ‘funny’ it stands to reason you’d probably not be invited to join in with standing around the cake and singing happy birthday. It’s not okay to ruin something for somebody else after they have explicitly asked you not to, regardless of whether you think what you’re doing is funny. OP’s sister had asked for everybody to pose a sensible photo so if the OP’s son couldn’t do that then why should he be a part of it on that occasion?

It doesn’t even sound like OP’s son was excluded from every photo taken on the day out, it was one photo. It’s not like anybody has said they don’t want to ever take a photo of him again or that they will erase all photos of him from their house, it sounds like they just wanted one single photo where the eyes weren’t immediately drawn to the not-so-small-anymore child making a silly face. Surely that’s fine.

I’m not saying the OP’s son is a horror. I’m not saying he should be excluded from every photo for the rest of forever. I’m just saying that sometimes it’s okay not to want somebody trying to be funny to overshadow everybody else, why should his cousins have to accept that in every group photo he is going to be in it pulling silly faces and drawing all attention away from themselves? If he wants to pull faces in photos where he is the only subject or where everybody is happy for him to pull a face then that’s okay, but it’s not okay when somebody has explicitly said they’d like everybody to just smile normally. In that case it’s okay for the options to be that he either choose to just smile nicely or that he be asked to sit out of the photo on that occasion, he can’t expect to be a part of something if he’s not able to follow the rules or requests for it. It’s okay to be quirky, but don’t then expect to be included in things if your quirk goes against it. If his ‘quirk’ was never wearing socks then that’s fine, but don’t then expect to be allowed into soft play or indoor trampolining. If his quirk was having to replace the real words in carols with joke ones that’s fine, but don’t expect to be invited to be part of the school Christmas choir. It’s fine to have quirks but it’s also find for others to sometimes say that actually, right now is not the time or place for them and that they’d rather they weren’t a part of whatever they’re trying to do.

Give him a boiled sweet everytime you want a photo or ask him to count to twenty.
Something to distract him from the habit he has got into.
Imagine his wedding photos if he is still doing it

@GeorgiaGirl52 no "bollocking" does NOT mean hitting a child. Hitting that leaves a mark is illegal (where I am) for a start.