Your Kids Aren’t Little Anymore—But This Season Is Still Worth Photographing

I’ve been photographing families for more than a decade now, and one of the greatest joys of this “job” is getting to watch families grow.

I’ve photographed babies as newborns, then watched them come back for their first birthdays, family photos, and eventually with a new baby brother or sister added to the mix. There are families I’ve photographed year after year, and I’ve literally watched their children grow up through my camera.

But there’s also a trend I’ve noticed over the years that makes me a little sad.

We are really good at documenting the beginning. We photograph the pregnancy. That sweet newborn stage. The chubby six-month sitter session. The first birthday. The toddler years when their cheeks are still round and their little hands fit inside ours.

And then somewhere along the way, we stop.

As our kids get bigger, family photos seem to become less of a priority. Maybe it’s because those years don’t feel quite as picturesque.

There are missing teeth and braces. Growth spurts and gangly limbs. Glasses. Hormonal acne. Questionable hairstyles. Clothes they suddenly have very strong opinions about. And then you reach the tween and teenage years, where getting everyone together at the same time can feel impossible with crazy sports schedules.

But I truly believe that these middle years are just as important to photograph as the younger years. Maybe even more so.

The awkward stages are part of the story

My mom loved to take photos and I’m so grateful for that! When I look back through photos from my childhood, some of my favorites are the ones that tell the real story of my childhood. Awkward phases included!

There was the phase where I wore possibly the worst pair of glasses imaginable and looked a little Harry Potter’s sister (before HP was a thing!).

The incredibly fluffy bangs that I spent many hours perfecting with hair spray. The questionable clothing choices (sweater vests, anyone?). All of the awkwardness that came with growing up.

When you’re living in the actual moment, none of it seems particularly worthy of documenting. It’s honestly the least photogenic phase of life!

But looking back on those now? I treasure them! Because when I look at them, I’m taken back to those moments in time. Before adult-hood. Before the internet. When life seemed easier and less stressful. I remember what our house looked like. What our morning routines looked like. Who my friends were. The activities and movies I loved at the time. Who I was becoming.

A single photograph can bring back an entire season of life that you might not even realize you had forgotten. That's something we often underestimate when we're living in the middle of it.

Me climbing the walls, close to age 9…not sure why I look cross-eyed here, LOL

Someday, in the very near future…

When we take a photograph today, we evaluate it based on how we look right now.

Is everyone smiling? Does my hair look okay? Does my child have a giant gap where their two front teeth used to be? Does my teenager actually look happy to be standing next to us?

But twenty years from now, I don't think those are the things we're going to care about.

We're going to notice how little they still looked. How our son's head barely reached our shoulder. The braces our daughter couldn't wait to get off. The way the siblings leaned into each other before they grew up and started building lives of their own.

We'll notice the clothes, the hairstyles, the trends and all of the tiny details that placed our family in that exact moment in time.

The things that may feel imperfect today might actually be the things we treasure most later.

We talk so much about how quickly babies change, and they absolutely do.

But big kids are changing quickly too. They become more independent. Our family schedules get busier. More and more of their world begins to exist outside of the safety of home. One day, the people who have all been living under the same roof and sitting around the same dinner table won't be there every night anymore.

That makes this season feel incredibly worthy of documenting to me. Not because everything about it is beautiful and easy. But because it's ours.

Get in the photo, moms!

There's another reason I think family photographs become even more important as our kids get older. They aren't only documenting your kids. They're documenting you/us as their mom during this season, too.

So often moms are the ones taking the pictures. We're documenting birthdays and vacations and Christmas mornings and ordinary afternoons from behind our phones. Which means we can end up with thousands of photographs of our children's lives and very few that show that we were right there living it with them.

Your kids may not appreciate that now. But someday, I think they will. They will want to see what you looked like when they were ten. They'll want the picture of themselves standing beside you when they were twelve.

They'll notice how young you looked in a photograph you almost didn't want to take because you were worried about your arms or your weight or whether you had the right outfit.

And those pictures will tell their story, too.

Life is moving faster than ever

Maybe this is something I notice more as I get older, but life feels like it moves at an incredibly rapid pace. Technology changes overnight. Trends change. Our culture is changing. The things our kids are interested in change almost overnight.

And as all of that continues to move faster, I think photographs and videos are only going to become more important. They give us something tangible to return to; a record of what our life looked like before it changed again.

Someday our kids will be able to show their own children what they looked like at ten or thirteen or sixteen. They'll laugh at their clothes. Their hair. The phones we thought were incredibly advanced. The things that seemed so normal to us at the time.

And they'll have proof of this life we built together.

Maybe your child is nine and missing half their teeth. Maybe your twelve-year-old suddenly feels awkward in front of the camera. Maybe your teenager has braces and acne and would genuinely rather be doing anything other than family pictures.

Photograph them anyway. And get in the photograph with them.

You don't need to wait until everyone is in a prettier phase. You don't need to wait until your child fixes their teeth, their skin clears up, you lose ten pounds, or life gets less busy.

Because this is childhood too.

The baby photos matter. The first birthdays matter. The senior portraits will matter. But all of these years in between matter just as much.

And someday, I have a feeling you won't look back at those photographs and see the awkward stage at all. You'll just be incredibly grateful you have something that takes you back to who they were — and who you were — right then.

If you’re ready to update your family photos and preserve this chapter before it changes again, I’d love to photograph it for you. Let’s chat!

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