SMILE for the camera...

[buddy]

Starting with school pictures, Q was making such a weird, corners of the mouth down fake face for pictures. His school picture ended up being one of those serious GQ kinds of pictures, fingers in his pants etc... (see my photos posted earlier). Well, it has always been a silly face vs. smile thing but lately it seemed like he was being oppositional and trying to ruin pictures.

Anyone see parenthood where the cousin was helping him change his vocal tone and facial expression in a mirror to say sorry? I thought it was a tiny bit exaggerated BUT...

Last night for the annual, comparing how big the kids are getting, take pictures around the tree fest.... Q was doing the worst face ever. bottom teeth jutted out and corners of the mouth totally pulled back... just so weird. Everyone was saying, Q just smile your normal smile (he USED to do fine). Finally inbetween pictures he came up to me and said, mom show me the face I am making. So I did it. He said, can you push my face how you want it. So I actually pushed the corners of his mouth up and he tried it on his own a few times. I reminded him to keep his teeth back, just a normal bite. He said thanks and we got some cute pics last night and I got some this morning too. I dont mind silly pics once in a while but not when the family is trying to get a nice picture. I feel terrible we were getting so mad at him like that. It looked so deliberate. He did great after that so I really doubt he could feel it for some reason. Poor kid. That is why I try to give him the benefit of the doubt at first as much as possible. When I dont, this is what happens. OH well, live and learn.

 

[InsaneCdn]

Ever notice that the ONE time we shouldn't have given the benefit of the doubt... is the time we DO?

GFGland.
I'm hoping I'm not stuck here forever, but... its gonna be a while!

 

[buddy]

yes, actually both ways.... I do when I shouldn't and dont when I should. But when think about it ahead of time, I do try to look at skill deficit first and not assume he is just trying to be mean. It seems like that many times... like tonight he walked by his cousin and kicked him (not to fight, like to get his attention) which was still not the right way to do it.... then I realized we had just told him he couldn't do what they were doing...(putting their ipod on a remote car and videoing others... i thought he wanted to drive it with THEIR I pods on it as it was set up...he was wanting to put HIS on it... Iw as afraid he woudl crash the car and ruin their ipods.... but didn't get that till after he said something. THEN I realized they had HIS remote car. ONce again he was not included in the boys play, ANd the little girls had gone and locked themselves in their room because they didn't want him to play and didn't want him taking pics of them with his galaxy player. ummmm, they had just spent the previous two hours taking tons of pics iwth their new cameras and ipods. But when Q wanted to it was annoying. OH REALLY .... just always taking the NO side for Q. I should have helped advocate but when Q hears me do that he gets embarassed or goes off on everyone. He waked off and did fine.

 

[ready2run]

poor guy being excluded like that. my youngest son being the only truely normal easy child in this family other than me gets excluded alot for not being difficult child... and he gets that 'what's wrong with you' look for trying to do normal things like playing with the toys instead of lining them up or trying to launch them like grenades.

my 6yo difficult child can't seem to get a normal picture in if he knows there is one coming. he truely thinks he is smiling nicely when he looks like he is growling. my 12yo will 9/10 times have her eyes closed or look like she is stoned. i do get some amazing pictures of them though, when they are not expecting it. i have gfg6's school picture up on the wall regardless of if he looks like he is growling...lol. the teacher said we could get retakes and i said, nah this picture is totally him!

 

[buddy]

poor guy being excluded like that. my youngest son being the only truely normal easy child in this family other than me gets excluded alot for not being difficult child... and he gets that 'what's wrong with you' look for trying to do normal things like playing with the toys instead of lining them up or trying to launch them like grenades.

my 6yo difficult child can't seem to get a normal picture in if he knows there is one coming. he truely thinks he is smiling nicely when he looks like he is growling. my 12yo will 9/10 times have her eyes closed or look like she is stoned. i do get some amazing pictures of them though, when they are not expecting it. i have gfg6's school picture up on the wall regardless of if he looks like he is growling...lol. the teacher said we could get retakes and i said, nah this picture is totally him!

I do the same, I have really learned not to ask for smiles. It is only at school picture time or group shots when people say...ok everyone smile! that we have an issue. I love candid shots better anyway. Gives us better recordings of real memories. Poor easy child I can totally see how it could be lonely to want to play in a typical way and no one around can do it! He is so little too, probably hard to really "get" why that happens. My cousin blogged about taking christmas pictures and showed all the awful attempts at the whole family pics. then someone told her about the collage kind and she thought it was genius. She had lots of individual cute pics so put them together and that was her holiday card! It was a super funny blog she wrote, we can probably all relate.

 

[Renea]

My difficult child does the same thing when we need him to smile for a picture. He used to give us this beautiful little smile for pictures but for the past year or so he has been doing this really weird thing with his jaw in every picture and it looks so fake. We usually have to tickle him to get him to smile a "real" smile. lol

 

[InsaneCdn]

Lets see... Kindergarten picture was fairly good. After that... it was all downhill. Multi-retakes. In-studio re-takes. No-usable-takes. Right into HS.

And then... we got to the bottom of difficult child's real issues, and started making a difference in his life... and this year's picture? usable on the first take.

So... sometimes, there is hope!