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??

It's not at all a given that he can't control himself, rather than him just not feeling the need to control the impulse to do it

thats a really good point.

It sounds like maybe he has been pulling this silly faces for so long now that he almost has a mental block stopping him from being able to smile nicely, or even just pull a straight face. Maybe the jump from ‘silly face’ to ‘nice smiley face’ is genuinely too hard for him, especially if he doesn’t have a comfortable repertoire of ‘nice faces’ as a go to, but as he has found out some things that are cute and quirky when you’re a toddler or small child start to become annoying and tiresome as you get older and will lead to you being left out of things. It sounds like he does want to be included in the photos but maybe if he really can’t get a hold of this behaviour he needs some structured help from you to do so.

I would have another serious chat with him about this as from your update it does sound like he wants to try and smile for photos but then when the impulsive thought to pull a silly face in his head he can’t, for some reason, resist doing it. Maybe he needs to practice following instructions during photographs and ignoring that thought without the additional pressure to smile and look nice. Could you start with asking him to pull specific funny faces for photos (that you’re taking at home as part of untraining this habit), so get him to pull a bunny teeth face or a ghost face etc. The skill he’s practicing won’t be making a nice face but just ignoring the impulse to do something different to what you’ve instructed. Then when he is able to pull the specific silly face you’ve asked for move on to exaggerated facial expressions that aren’t in his usual repertoire, so maybe a very angry face, a very sad face, a very happy face, a very surprised face etc. Again the skill is ignoring his impulse to do something different to the instruction and on practising making a specific face but without the added pressure for it to be ‘nice.’

At the same time practice making smiles that are appropriate for different photos such as a nice smiley face or a straight relaxed face etc in the mirror but without the pressure of a camera. Give these faces labels, so ‘straight face,’ ‘nice smile’ ‘big grin’ etc and practice having him pull these faces following a verbal instruction, but away from the camera. You can model this for him too, that way if the issue is that he’s anxious when the camera comes out because he doesn’t really know how to make a ‘nice’ face but is to embarrassed to admit it he will have a clear example of what a ‘nice smile’ looks like and can have lots of practice in the mirror making faces others would feel are camera appropriate. When he’s making faces in the mirror (and you can throw in some silly ones too to stop it being a completely boring/ serious activity so long as he is following your instructions and not going off-piste trying to be funny) make sure you make it clear whether it is a ‘silly face’ or a ‘sensible face.’ You can then talk about how for some photos it’s fine to do a silly face but that there are also situations where he needs to do a sensible face, together you can talk about when those situations might be (eg: school, passport, group photo when an adult has asked you to do one etc).

Once he has mastered pulling a specific ‘nice’ face in the mirror in response to a clearly labelled instruction, and pulling a silly/ exaggerated face for the camera in response to an instruction, the next step is to put the two skills together and practice pulling a specifically labelled ‘sensible’ face for the camera from the faces you have practiced. If he is anxious because he doesn’t know what to do in the photos you have then given him a repertoire of faces he can use in photo situations and you can support by shouting out, ‘okay everyone, nice smile’ using the language you have practiced. For school photo day you can give him clear instructions such as, ‘for the class photo you need to choose a sensible face such as ‘nice smile’ or ‘straight face’, but for the individual photos you can choose one sensible face and one silly face of your choice.’ Hopefully having a clear instruction of exactly what he needs to do, and having had the practice he needs to do it, he will then be able to resist the impulse to do something silly and different to what’s been asked.

There's far more information about OP's son, including the fact that it's been going on since toddlerhood, it's the only "naughty" thing he does, he becomes distresses when he can't do it, he can't articulate why he does it (because context plainly shows he isn't entertained nor think he is entertaining others), he can't even stop when trying to do private practise shots with Mum.

I think a lot of this isn't really true tbh. He DOES articulate why he does it - because it's funny, some posters just can't believe it's possible he could mean that. And the distress OP has mentioned has come when he's got in trouble, not because he himself is distressed by not being able to stop. It just sounds like he's acting impulsively, it doesn't automatically mean it's an impulse he can't choose to control.

He's not your DSS. If you're having some sort of issue with your DSS that looks to be some sort of compulsion, you might want to start your own thread, although from the tone of this one, I wouldn't blame you at all if you didn't want to.

I'm not having an issue with my DSS. It's not at all unusual to compare cases to the people we know, I don't know why you are finding this so strange.

I'm not having an issue with my DSS.

OP is having an issue with her son. Quite a serious one. It's therefore not a comparison, and probably explains why you're keen to oversimplify the issue (eg by assuming it really is as simple as "kid just thinks it's funny").

Some posters have some really good suggestions that sound akin to CBT. It might be worth seeing a CBT therapist.

It's probably lost in the thread now, but one or two people have also mentioned that in their cases, it turned out to be a sign of autism. I'm certainly not doing the "difficult behaviour is always autism" thing, but since a couple of parents of children with autism raised it, it might be worth looking at.

Of course it's a comparison, why are you so hostile about this?

In my opinion (and the opinion of many others) it is you who is "over" anything in this case - over complicating. To many of us, all the evidence suggests he DOES think it's funny, because a) he's young and it's not unusual for kids to take longer than we'd like to pick up on things, and b) his mum has always laughed, giving him the continued impression that it's funny.

@HellMc OP, I’m very late to this thread but I have read your posts and skimmed the rest.

My DS was three when he realised that he could make himself belch if he swallowed hard when drinking water. The look of surprise on his face the first time was absolutely hilarious and we probably laughed at him doing it on another four or five occasions. He then started doing it every time he took a drink so we got very fed up with it, and when his childminder complained that he was doing it at her house and other children were copying him we knew it was time to knock it on the head.

I kid you not: it has taken THREE YEARS of consistently saying ‘no’ with a completely straight face to get to the point where he no longer does it. Even now I will occasionally catch him glancing at us when he takes a drink to see if he can get away with it, and it takes a hard stare from me or DH to make him think better of it.

My point is this: making your caregivers laugh is incredibly powerful positive reinforcement and it takes a LOT to undo once it is established. Someone scornfully said that the child concerned here isn’t a dog. Anyone who has trained a puppy and parented a toddler can tell you that there is a lot of common ground, and both need consistent, clear messages with rewards and consequences. Bad habits are incredibly easy to form and incredibly difficult to break for both.

I hope you will take this anecdote in the spirit of kindness that I intend it. You have rewarded and then ignored this behaviour for almost all of your son’s life. It is going to take hard work to unpick and you have a very short window before he enters his pre-teens and starts doing stuff like this deliberately to rebel and piss you off . I wish you good luck.

WTAF????!!!!

Of course it's a comparison

It's a false equivalence. Your DSS's behaviour is not an issue. OP's son's is. They had to go postal to get him to pose for a passport photo and he's old enough to know what that means. Plus trouble at school.

So of course when you say he's like your DSS, you're oversimplifying because you're comparing a child whose behavior isn't a serious issue to one whose is. One that seems to be a compulsion, on this one matter alone.

Taking the child's answers completely at face value (he says he thinks it's funny, therefore that really is the reason, and all the context means nothing) isn't working. So even if you're right and those of us who think something a bit more complex might be going on are wrong and totally overcomplicating it, the fact is that OP has tried your idea of "it literally is just a bad joke and there's nothing more to it" and hasn't got anywhere. It's time to explore the possibility that it might not be so one dimensional.

Ye gods. Some of you could start an argument in an empty room.

How do you know it's not a problem? My DSS frequently does silly things he's been asked not to do because he thinks they're funny, and they do often cause problems akin to the passport photo issue. We just don't attribute them to him being unable to control those impulses due to more complex issues.

I'm not ignoring the context. I'm saying the context doesn't point to what you're claiming it does. He has said why he does it and he isn't distressed by himself doing it, he's distressed by the occasional bollocking.

And Op hasn't exhausted the option of treating it as bad behaviour - as by her own admission she has always laughed at this behaviour, doesn't tell him off, and argues with the people who have.

Which is straight from the kid's own mouth...
Op has been very clear that, apart from the passport photo fiasco, he has never been given any consequence for clowning about. In fact she stresses that she's been a willing audience and just laughs.
And you've decided that he's got some sort of compulsive disorder, and telling posters that "we are not discussing your boy, we're discussing this boy", as if you were intimately involved with his case.
Draw your horns in. People will discuss whatever they please.

I suspect he got upset last night because the serious talk wasn’t accompanied by a bribe.
He’s had years of his mother thinking it’s funny and reinforcing behaviour that is now proving to be a serious problem for not only the family but also the school. It’s not going to suddenly stop overnight.
Maybe now the OP has started taking it seriously he’ll begin to listen and behave appropriately- if he doesn’t then he’s going to have real problems when he starts at senior school and his peers start getting fed up with him.

“People are fed up with my child’s attention seeking behavior that I can’t get under control because I let it go for most of his life and he is now facing natural consequences”

Yeah fixed your title for you to what is actually going on. Other parents/teachers are already annoyed with you for son (not dear son because this isn’t dear at all) for ruining photos. Not ok and you need to put a stop to it. If you are still on vacation I’d tell him if he does it in the next photo he is missing out on the next fun activity and not just the photo. If he makes a face he doesn’t even get to be in one group shot. He is old enough to understand and most importantly old enough to stop.

It's not hurting anyone. No one is entitled to a picture of someone else. If they want at pic of him, they should take it as it comes. If they don't want it, so be it.

No, they’re not “entitled” to a picture of him. But it’s one thing to say “no thanks, I’ll step out” and another to ruin it by his actions. My DD does not want to go a party to which I’ve been invited. She doesn’t like the activity they are doing. It’s not an obligation - she’s perfectly entitled to say “no thank you”. But what she’s not entitled to do is to go and then spoil it for everyone else with her poor behaviour.

Have you tried taking photos in a burst? So that you take a whole lot of them in a row, and see if you can capture him with a non silly face at the beginning or end?

It just make him practise smiling looking into a mirror?

Heeeeeere's Johnny!

I haven't "decided" anything of the sort...Johnny (I have a feeling we've met before and your motivation here is not entirely about finding a solution for OP). But it's all pointing to the possibility of a more complex cause than "ten year old understands difficult behaviour completely and can be taken entirely at face value because that's what makes the thinking easier for spiteful adults on the internet". The fact that some other woman's stepson is annoying but whose behaviour forms no comparison to OP's son has nothing to do with it. We do in fact have posters with similar experiences that are comparable, and they suggest something a little deeper than you with your neon-lit vendetta wish to think about.

The possibility should be explored. Nothing else is working.

How do you know it's not a problem?

Because you told me his behaviour wasn't a issue.

OP's son's is. To the point where it became a problem at school, where most kids draw the line better, and he jeopardised a passport photo over it, and couldn't stop even in private, trying to please his mother. Several posters have told us about their own relatives who do the same thing, who turned out to be autistic or willing to wreck their wedding pictures and be airbrushed out of family history over it. That's not a bad comedian. That's something else.

Even if Mum keeps saying it's funny, Dad and school and Aunty and Grandma and the passport office all say it's not and he knows that. He's been brought almost to tears over it. I know it's easy to say he's just a twat or a prick or it's all Mum's fault, but we are at the village level of child raising here and even the village can't get through to him. So maybe it's time to try a trained expert. Your stepson isn’t comparable, has nothing to do with it, and if you don't need to consider a therapist for him, just be glad.

OK @ReneBumsWombats

Your line of communicating is so forceful I can't be bothered to explain my POV (which many people on here share) again OR why my personal example is perfectly comparable.

You stick with your opinion, I shall stay with mine.

It's a shame you don't like robust disagreement, but I haven't insulted you or made any personal attacks.

Ultimately the value of our opinions is in what helps OP solve the problem. I don't know if a therapist will help, but I think it's more likely than telling her it's all her fault because your stepson is annoying and you can't decide if it's a problem or not.

And yes, I'm well aware that many people on this horrible, spiteful thread share your views. That's why I'm sharing mine, since I seem to be in a minority and I think the alternative needs to be put forward. It isn't about you and me, or even my old friend Johnny.

His behaviour is completely unacceptable and I agree with your husband and sister’s approach. Stop pussyfooting around with the bargaining - treats and alternating with silly/straight pictures. Don’t be surprised when he’s never invited to a wedding.

Ultimately the value of our opinions is in what helps OP solve the problem. I don't know if a therapist will help, but I think it's more likely than telling her it's all her fault because your stepson is annoying and you can't decide if it's a problem or not.

I can decide if it's a problem or not. It DOES cause issues but that isn't the same thing of me "having an issue with him" which is how you put it. Similarly in OPs situation, it's not likely to be a major, all encompassing issue, because photos are only so significant, it's just a minor ongoing issue with his behaviour.

And I'm not purely basing my opinion on my DSS, that was a throwaway comparison because the behaviour is similar, which I still believe is not at all a strange thing to do. I'm saying it based on what she's said about her son and how the behaviour has been tackled so far.

And yes, I'm well aware that many people on this horrible, spiteful thread share your views. That's why I'm sharing mine, since I seem to be in a minority and I think the alternative needs to be put forward. It isn't about you and me, or even my old friend Johnny.

My views are not horrible or spiteful. I agree that some people on this thread have been, but the view that this is most likely just a bit of annoying behaviour that needs tackling (by taking it a bit more seriously when she's so far just laughed it off) is not horrible or spiteful.

I don't mind if people respond to me or not, but for some reason I find it so annoying when they announce they're not going to answer and then they do. It's fine not to be above the discussion.

I did not say your views were horrible and spiteful. I do, however, think the thread is and therefore your suggestion that a lot of horrible and spiteful people agree with you doesn't sway me to your way of thinking.

This clearly is an issue for OP. Nobody gets as far as a MN thread for something inconsequential. It's led to scenes in Asda and at school, tears and family acrimony. You think it's minor, OP clearly doesn't.

The son is way past the stage of his mother being his only indication of whether it's funny or not. It's an issue that he can't do a normal photo for his passport or even in private as practise with his mother. Others on this thread with the exact same problem have suggested other explanations than bad parenting or at least indicated that it really is A Thing that isn't easily solved by external disapproval and seems very deep rooted.

A therapist might not work but it can't hurt, and at the moment, hurt is all the OP's got. And the indication is that, despite what the ten year old says, he may not have thr fullest, most mature and self-aware grasp of the issue. If he were mature and self-aware, he wouldn't be doing it!

Good for your sister.
You are raising an annoying brat. Time he grew up a bit.

Good luck, OP.