Can we look through my photo book?

All families have their traditions and its usually an activity or pattern of behaviour that reflects a family’s values, interests, or beliefs. It can be as simple as hanging the Christmas stocking up together at Christmas, or having a caterpillar cake every year on your birthday or getting a photo book every year!! We have a family tradition that every year on my children’s birthday they receive a photobook with pictures in from their previous year of life. These traditions are usually passed down the generations so my parents may not have made me a photobook how we now see a photobook but we had photo albums where photos were printed out and slotted in. So, the traditions remain but get adjusted slightly as time moves on. And having these traditions brings you all closer together doesn’t it, it strengthens your bond as a family (or at least I thought they did). And that’s what makes them so important.

My family tradition of the photobook always takes the same format, it starts with their birthday pictures from the previous year, Christmas, Halloween, our annual holiday then any days out. It gives them a visual reminder of everything they have done over the previous year. My daughter who is 14 has 14 of these books one for every year of her life. My son who is only 5 has less. And they love these books. When my daughter was young enough where I read to her at bedtime she would pick these photobooks most nights to look through and we talked through everything we had done the previous year. It has been a really lovely tradition and definitely brought us closer together. My son is different so I was unsure how these photobooks would go down with him but he has absolutely loved them too. Most nights at bedtime my son chooses one of the photobooks to look through before bed which leads me to believe he does love them otherwise why would he pick them. When younger he would sit and look at the pictures but now he is older we talk about the pictures together. We must have looked through them a million times over and each time I say the same things…

“Here we are at your birthday BBQ”
“Ooooo that’s when we went to Scotland”
“That was your first time riding your bike”
“Look at the Christmas tree we decorated”
“There we are at the wedding”

And each time he says the same things…

“I hated that wedding”
“I never want a BBQ again”
“I don’t want photos with other people. Can you cut the other people out?”

And at first this really upset me. My family tradition was not bringing us closer together, we weren’t bonding over it and that is what it was supposed to do!! And I vowed never to read those books with him again or make him another one as clearly he didn’t love them as much as what I thought he did. But every night he would ask…

“Can we look through my photo book?“

And my heart sank because I couldn’t hear again how much he hated everything. We looked through them and the same things were said. Did he mean it? I am absolutely sure he did mean it. These photobooks are a year behind so my sons most recent photobook starts with his fourth birthday and goes up to his fifth birthday. And my son is now a few weeks off being six so the events in that photobook are fairly old. And since then my understanding of my son has increased ten fold.

Knowing him now and understanding his needs better, I can see how he would have hated a wedding. I can see how he doesn’t like BBQs – he doesn’t eat meat!!!! I can see how he doesn’t want anyone else in a photo with him because sometimes he just doesn’t like people!!! So how can I blame him for saying what I think are mean things but he is just telling me the truth about all the things I thought he would like. I shouldn’t be forcing him into things I think he would like. And I realised he loves the tradition of the photobook but not the actual events that I am recording in that photobook because he didn’t enjoy them the first time round so doesn’t want a reminder of them.

And so like everything else I had done over the last year I knew I needed to change this. And I knew this years photobook would be different. Over the last year I had become so much more understanding to his needs. I didn’t drag him to things where I thought he would have a good time. I accepted (or was on my way to accepting) the things he liked to do. Not just liked to do, but the things his body and brain could cope with. He had a smaller window of tolerance than most people and that was not his fault so I needed to be aware of that. He didn’t like crowds, he liked nature, he LOVED trampolining, he liked staying in the house, he LOVED drawing and painting and so we did a lot more of those things and a lot less of the other things. And any occasion we did do the other things – a full on day out with lots of people I rarely took photos purely because I was keeping my wits about me for any sign of dysregulation in my son that I didn’t even remember to take a photo. There were countless days out where I have no recording of them at all. And if I did have photos I rarely went for group photos unless I was sure my son wanted it.

So when it came to collating the hundreds of photos I needed for the photobook this year I made sure it had all his favourite things in  – the time he painted a birdhouse for the garden, playing in the garden, sat on the sofa, at the trampoline park. There were no big events, no full on days out and very little pictures of anyone else in the family. There were a few group shots and if there was another family member in shot they were in the background so you could argue they weren’t strictly in the photo.

We are a few weeks away from my son’s next birthday and I am hopeful that my family tradition can live on and will be liked by my son. What began as an attempt to capture what I think are cherished moments has evolved into a profound lesson in understanding and adaptation. The point of a family tradition is to bond and strengthen relationships within the family and there is no point in continuing a tradition if it is breaking you apart. My son’s candid words, initially interpreted as dislike for the photobook, have become a poignant reminder of the importance of listening to his needs and understanding his unique perspective. This year’s photo book, moments captured that he cherishes, photos carefully selected to suit his needs, stands as a testament to our evolving tradition—one that embraces flexibility and celebrates individuality. And as we wait his response to this new and improved photobook, I’m reminded that the essence of family traditions lies not in their steadfastness, but in their capacity to grow and evolve alongside us.