A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words – and Feelings

I have thousands of photos of my kids on my phone – photos of them in adorable outfits, videos of them singing or learning to walk, selfies with me when we’re out and about, not to mention all the photos and videos I’ve saved that my husband has taken as well. I’ve photographed them nearly every day of their short lives. And periodically buy more iCloud storage.

I often struggle with whether I’m, in fact, over-documenting their lives rather than just being present. Are there adverse effects to their childhood when I’m constantly whipping out my phone to capture “something cute” they’re doing?

The Slow-Mo Photo Roll of the ‘90s

Certainly when I was growing up, this wasn’t a dilemma my own parents faced. Like many families in the ‘90s, we had one camera (a Nikon point and shoot) that captured our birthdays and family vacations. I remember watching my dad carefully loading a roll of film, and then taking that finished roll to a drug-store photo lab to get developed. Who else remembers the suspense of waiting to see your pictures returned to you in an envelope? The entire process could take weeks and was an exercise in patience, and sometimes those photos turned out terrible.

A lot of these printed photos ended up in empty shoe boxes, but my mom made baby albums for all of us. These thick spiral-bound books with photos mounted on adhesive pages and protected by clear film are still at my parents’ house. They contain photos of me swaddled in that ubiquitous hospital newborn blanket next to a caption sticker that reads, “It’s a girl!” There are snaps of me in the bath, portraits of my parents holding me in front of our house, and photos of every milestone culminating in my first birthday. They took photos, but not an endless amount of photos – and certainly not photos of the same thing over and over.

Throughout my childhood, I would periodically reach for the album with my name on it and ask my mom about different pictures, but I haven’t looked in years – although my mom still treasures them.

Memory-Making in the Digital Age

Now my kids ask me to do the same thing: look at pictures of themselves on my phone. They love photos of family birthdays, ones of them in Halloween costumes, ice skating, school concerts, and playing in the park. We also sometimes look back on the more mundane moments I’ve captured – riding the subway, walking home from school, and eating an ice-cream – and they like reliving those in photos too.

So maybe all my picture taking is worth something: the joy my kids get from seeing photos of themselves and recalling the memories. To be honest, I love scrolling back and looking at the pictures too, and we’re able to easily share videos with family who don’t live nearby. I’m making more of an effort these days to actually get some of my favourite photos printed. We put them in picture frames around the house and stick them on the fridge, and I may even start photo albums for my kids one day.

Maybe we don’t need to be so hard on ourselves with all this picture taking, especially if the majority of photos are for our own enjoyment (rather than posting on social media). I do it because I want to remember every little thing about my kids’ childhoods, and for now at least, photos are my way of doing that. Like my mom, I treasure them.