MIL took a photo of my child with a stranger

[Cookiemonster81]

We were out with my in-laws last weekend. Stopped for some food in a small grassy area and as we were finishing up another family came and sat by us. The mother gave her children some little bubble machines to play with and my toddler got very excited so started playing with the children (with the families consent). At one point my DS went and just sat on the lap of the mother - I think she had her phone in her hand and he hasn't grasped that you can't just look at everyone's phones yet.
She was really lovely about it and entertained him for a minute, before I decided that as we had finished we would leave because I didn't want my child disturbing this family for ages.

Then later that night I get a couple of photos sent over from my MIL of my son sitting on this woman's lap. It might sound silly but I instantly burst into tears because my self esteem is at an all time low and I don't have a single photo of me and my child that I like, yet here he looked so happy with this total stranger, it was a nice picture. If it was me and my child I would have been really happy. MIL has never sent a photo of me playing with my son.

A week on and I still feel gutted. It's really got me down. I don't know if she did it on purpose, I doubt it really, but why the fuck would you take a photo of a total stranger that we spent about 5 minutes with and further, why the fuck do you think I'd want it. What are you expecting me to do with that photo. I was there, stood chatting with the woman, I saw it.

AIBU to be so bothered by this, given that MIL knows how I feel about things at the moment or do I just need to stop sulking and forget it.

She probably thought it was quite sweet that your son was confident enough to interact with this woman and that it was not a regular occurrence so worth taking a snap.

It really isn't an attack on you and she isn't deliberately taunting you.

Are you getting any support (GP, counselling?) because your reaction seems way out of proportion?

What we say doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t bother me but it does bother you for whatever reason. I would try to see it from a different angle though. You’re raising a confident, sociable little boy and that’s a good thing. Obviously you’re doing a great job with him . Try to see the positives .

Why didnt you stop your child sitting on a strangers lap if you are so upset about it afterwards?

OP, your mil was simply recording a cute moment. One where your son felt emboldened to climb up on a strangers lap to play with her phone.

Just ask your mil to take a few pics of you and your dc next time. I do this. If I didn't I would have hardly any photos of me and my dc.

You sound so down about yourself. Why is that? Could you afford to book a sweet informal photoshoot at home or in a park with a professional photographer? Or of not ask the best photographer you know to take some pix in portrait mode. Get some photos you love and can keep forever. Re your MIL, I doubt she even registered this woman but was focused on her grandchild looking sweet.

You're clearly doing something right as a mum if your toddler was happy and confident enough to play with the other children and their mum.

See it as the compliment and success for you that it was! 😁

You are your DS’s mother and he loves you more than anyone else in the whole world.
Going forward ask people to take photos of you and your little boy. My kids got to about 10 before I realised I’m not in any of the photos with them, so I then made it my mission to ask anyone who was around to take them of me and the kids.

I get it. I mean you can't really say anything to her about it but it's sad that she wasn't 'inspired' to photograph your child and you, doing something nice, given you give attention and care to your child for much longer than a stranger.

My phone is full with photos of my dc and their dad + extended family having genuine fun but very little photos of me and dc even though I'm the primary carer.
You think of your child all grown up, years later, going through photos and all they have of you is a staged photo, where you had to ask for someone to capture it and then had to look at the camera and it needed your child to pose with you (which they don't normally like) - rather than everyday photos of spontaneous little joys and laughs, documented authentically.

I think it's quite common for mums not to have photos of themselves with their DC, simply because they are the ones normally taking the photos.
It's probably easier these days, but my kids just pre-dated the ubiquitous phone camera. I had a decent camera that I took around with us but DH rarely asked to use it, and if he did the results were usually of someone missing a head 😁
Now everyone permanently has a camera with them, there is no excuse. You need to ask whoever you are with to take photos of you with the children.

I don't think your MIL did anything wrong.

@elizzza has said exactly what I was thinking, @Cookiemonster81 - if I were you, I'd be asking people to take some pictures of you with the baby.

I have one granddaughter, and my lovely DIL sends us lots of pictures of her playing on her own, or with her dad, ds1, but as @elizzza says, she is not in many pictures because she is the one taking them - so when we see them, I make a point of taking, and sharing, plenty of pictures of our granddaughter with her mum as well as with us or her dad.

I think you are being ridiculous. Please don’t blame your mother in-law for this. I think I would Look back and laugh at a picture like this and say ‘Oh remember when Jack was a toddler, he was a friendly little thing, remember when we went to Xxxxx park and he plonked himself on that random woman! Ha! Bless him!’

If you haven’t got any nice pictures of you and him, start taking some! It’s nice weather this weekend, wear something nice, feed the ducks, play on swings, get an ice cream, buy bubbles and get your DH to take hundreds and pick some nice ones. Frame them, send them to your MIL, upload them to SM, do whatever it is you feel you are missing out on.

YABU to be annoyed by the photo to the point it has still worried you a week later

YANBU to be upset that no one takes non planned photos of you and your child. Can totally relate to this.

If you think about it, a lot of the times you're holding your son, you probably don't actually see his face! I'm sure he's happy as a pig in shit as the saying goes. Or he could have had wind with the other lady, that can make them (briefly) smiley 😁

No I could not care about this, I don't need to turn mountains out of mole hills

If I sent someone a nice photo and they came back to take me task about it because 'their feelings are valid' they'd get told to fuck right off tbh.

Thanks to the posters who have understood my upset, or even not understood it but been kind anyway.

Just to clarify for those that did not understand, I was not upset that my child sat with the stranger. She was a nice woman and he was having a great time. My upset was seeing that cemented in a photograph which I would have longed to have seen of myself with him.

It's not that photos don't exist with and him, I just hate them all. I feel I look hideous in them all. If I'm having a day where I feel good about myself I'll ask my husband to take a picture, but then I hate it - probably because I'm doing the whole forced smile for the camera, rather than the natural candid photos I have with him as like lots of people said, Mums often the ones taking the off the cuff pictures.

What's funny is that when I opened the picture initially I thought, oh I look nice here - it's taken from side angle so you can't really see the womans face full on. It took a second to realise I don't own that outfit, and am not as slim and oh, that's not me.

Haha, that did make me laugh.

@JustWannaBeWorthIt
"If I sent someone a nice photo and they came back to take me task about it because 'their feelings are valid' they'd get told to fuck right off tbh."

Did I say go back and take her to task, or did I say ask her if she'd mind taking some photos of OP in future?

I'd suggest you take a minute to actually listen or read as a first step in future, and maybe "fuck off" would trip out of your foul mouth less frequently.

Ask people to take photos of you with your kids.. your partner, your family, friends.
I realised there were hardly any pictures of me with my kids so I started making sure there were by asking fir them to be taken
Then you won't end up feeling this resentful

No, it would be a funny thing to rib the dc about, if anything.

"Remember that time you sat on a random woman's lap"?..

You will never be as young as you are now. Your child will never be this age again. Stop agonising about how you look. It’s a waste of a life! Keep asking people to take photos of you and if you can possibly afford it, pay a local photographer to do an ‘candid’ informal photoshoot. My kids are much older and I can promise you that when I look back on photos I felt hideous in at the time, I now think how young I looked, how cute my kids were and how lovely it was to have captured a moment.its your relationship that matters, not your dress size. Your kid won’t care if the label inside your dress is 18 or 10.

You said yourself in a subsequent post, you have lots of photos of you with your child. You just don't like them. You're being unreasonable.

Same

Love the username 😁

This