Extreme Parenting: Something to remind me

If I had a photograph of you
It's something to remind me
I wouldn't spend my life just wishing
Lyrics from "Wishing" by "A Flock of Seagulls"

If you were to ask a group of people "what one thing would you save from our home in event of an emergency, after people and pets?" I bet photos would be a popular response. Family photos are some of the most important objects to us especially as time passes by. We frequently take photos for granted only realizing the importance when it is to late. A loved one may pass away or life may not be as busy and we want to reminisce about the good times.

When parenting and even more so when parenting children with special needs life gets extremely busy. Life can also be difficult for your child and maybe you don't want pictures reminding you of the difficulties. Maybe taking photos is just one more thing on your never ending list that easily gets overlooked. It is extremely important to take the time to document your families lives with photos while you still have the opportunity.

Having adopted multiple children over the years we have seen first hand the upset and disappointment of not having pictures of their past. From just the general curiosity of what they looked like to the requiring a photo of themselves for a school assignment photos are important.

When we are at an activity or outing we take pictures, lots and lots of pictures! We start taking them almost the second we arrive at the activity. By taking many pictures there is a good chance of getting at least one or two happy ones.

Some of our children have some pretty significant challenges which makes going out difficult for them and we don't want their childhood remembered as tears and meltdowns. When we get the tears and meltdowns we cut the event short so that the majority of the time is thought of positively. So we try extremely hard to capture that happy moment even if it's just one second and yes we have pictures of the sad ones also.

We use these happy pictures for social stories for the next outing, we also use them for reminiscing about the outing or activity. Quite often after what we think was a negative outing our children come home saving how much fun it was and want to do "it" again so having one or two happy photos is important.

Go dust off your camera, charge up the battery, and take some pictures of your family. They don't need to be perfect, you just need to capture the moments.