An Unexpected Benefit of Video Sessions for Your Family
Cary Newborn Photography and Family Photography
There are so many wonderful reasons to invest in a professional photographer for your family and newborn photos, but there’s one important reason you may not know about. Research shows that when we display photos of our children and our families in our homes, it promotes our kids’ self-esteem.
That’s right! Making time for a photo shoot actually helps our children develop positive self-esteem when we follow it up by printing and displaying our photos.
Self-esteem is feeling good about ourselves and what we can do. Children with positive self esteem
Feel confident and capable,
Can better handle making mistakes, and are willing to try again,
Are more successful at home, school, and with friendships,
And have better stress management and stronger values.
But what does printing family photos have to do with self-esteem?
3 Ways Photos Impact Self-Esteem
1. Belonging. When our children see photos of themselves - even from the time of newborn photos! - they’re able to see how they belong in our family. They see how loved they are, and have been all along.
As Professor Geoff Beattie, Dean of Psychological Sciences at the University of Manchester, says, “For children in particular, looking at photographs is part of the socializing process, learning who you are and where you fit into the family. By displaying photographs of our children at different stages of their lives, we are making a very public statement that we are proud of them.”
2. Memories. Photos also remind our children of happy memories and actually bring back those positive and loving feelings they felt at the time the photo was taken.
These happy memories in photos can be especially important to remember during difficult or stressful times - which will come up for everyone from time to time. It helps our children to understand that the bad times won’t last forever, and more happy memories will be made.
It’s also a lovely way for our children to remember their milestones and see how far they’ve come and how your family has grown over the years.
3. Preserve your family history. As quickly as digital media seems to be changing, I don’t think any of us can guarantee our computer files of photos will be around forever, which is why it’s so important to print our photos for our children, and their future children and grandchildren to enjoy.
There’s nothing quite like being able to share your family’s story in photos - both the every day events and the extra special ones - and helping your children see the similarities between themselves and previous generations.
On top of what the research says, I would argue that choosing a documentary or lifestyle photo shoot makes the self-esteem benefits for our children even stronger because they’re allowed to be themselves in the photos - from the time of their newborn photography session on up!
Although it may sound strange, one of my boys’ favorite things to do as babies was to tour around our home in my arms and look at all of our family photos.
And since experts say children already have a sense of self-esteem by age 5, we should definitely display our family photos as early as possible.
For more information on printing your photos, check out our Photo Collections and my personal recommendations for Where to Print Your Photos.
