The single second of a photo

Do you ever look back at photos and find a picture that captured a moment that to the outsider looks so perfect but you know it wasn’t? But in that single second it looked perfect.

One family photo springs to mind of us all on a sandy beach a few years ago - big smiles with the sun and Welsh sea behind us. But the truth behind that photo is actually a pretty disastrous trip. It started with a difficult car journey (car sickness), then nowhere to park and Little C’s dad doing that dad thing where they get really angry at the fact there’s nowhere to park. So we end up driving up and down the main beach road for a good 30 minutes, debating whether to give up and go back to the caravan, until we finally find a space. Next came the cold wet sand (it didn’t look wet), then after 10 minutes of shivering on the wet sand we noticed all the other families packing up to leave and we then realised that the tide was very quickly coming in. Before we left I took a photo of all of us. We’re smiling, big smiles, it looks warm and sunny, we look so happy. The photo makes us laugh now as it’s such a false representation of that beach trip. I still love the photo though. 

I did it again recently. I captured a photo of Little C holding a cupcake at a children’s cake decorating activity I’d taken him to. I displayed this photograph proudly on my personal Facebook page. I love the photo. His little excited face; eyes wide, mouth open, showing off his decorated cupcake. The truth behind the photo is far from what that photo shows. He managed to decorate two of the four cupcakes (and I actually did most of it), we left the room multiple times to wander round the shop downstairs to take a break from the noise of the 20 kids upstairs and the music playing. He sat on my knee a lot, covered his ears and lost interest in the cupcakes very early on. He didn’t want to leave though as he knew there was food coming at the end and that was enough to keep him there. It was bloody hard work! I was slightly envious of the other mums sat in the cafe area drinking coffee and having a natter. I’m not knocking the staff or the experience at all - it’s a great idea for a fun activity and really good value for money. But I couldn’t help making a few suggestions to the member of staff at the end about doing a similar session for SEN children (I keep telling myself to stop doing this but I can’t help it - just a few tweaks and it could work). But anyway at the end of an (exhausting) two hours Little C was quite happy with lunch in his tummy and his box of cupcakes. We had accomplished another, fairly successful, trip out. The photo is lovely but its far from the reality.

I think we all do it. Photos on social media capturing a single moment that to others look perfect. I sometimes find it hard seeing other peoples family holiday photos and other ‘perfect moments’, as ours as a family are quite limited. But I remind myself that these are just one moment in time and the reality behind the photograph might not even be what we see. Especially for families with neurodiverse children. 

The moments captured in a photo are often so special. Photos are important. They freeze a moment and a memory, forever. So like most people, I love capturing as many moments that I can. 

Our moments are just rarer than most as we can’t do much as a family and Little C is still only leaving the house maybe once a week. I’m trying to get him out into the big wide world a bit more and sometimes we get out and other times we don’t, and sometimes we get somewhere and then leave straight away. Often it’s just a little walk to the nearby pond. But we keep trying. He is asking to go back to the caravan again so we are looking forward to this when the weather warms up - but when we do go, we’ll probably give a trip to the beach a miss.