What does reaching an age of reason have to do with taking photos of your kids for photo Christmas cards? Well, when your children are very young, you can jolly them and then maybe bribe them to sit still and smile. Once they are old enough to understand and believe your threats, you can blackmail them into looking their best.
Keep in mind that you have to first lay your groundwork by building up your “rep” as an adult who does not make idle threats. So, do not bandy about parental threatening phrases unless you are committed to carrying through.
You also have to give some thought to your threats so you can craft them to suit the specific child. For example, somewhere during the “tween” and teen years, many youngsters go through a sullen phase. Getting this child to show up for the family holiday photo is near to impossible and getting them to smile is usually too much to hope for.
A good threat for your daughter may be, “If we can’t get a decent, smiling photo of you, I’m going to use that baby picture of you in the saggy diaper!” Be aware, however, that this threat may leave your male child totally unmoved. For that child, you may need to threaten to personally and thoroughly clean out his bedroom and throw out all of his much-loved “junk.”
Have a bit of faith in your parental wiliness and hang on to your patience until that wonderful age when they stride off to college, confident that they already know more than their parents. They will become condescendingly sweet to the old folks for a while and you can snag some fabulous digital photo cards to one day show your grandchildren, with whom you will snicker over their parents’ weird hair styles, poses, and clothing choices!
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A very funny, yet practical, friend of mine firmly believes that all parents should take at least a few embarrassing photos of their kids, when young, to use as blackmail when they get to be teenagers
And if all your topnotch parental techniques are getting you nowhere, just download the best individual shot you can find of each of your offspring to use on one of the cards designed with multiple openings. I find it’s the best chance I have of ending up with a card with all happy faces.