Every fall when I get out of the car on photo day, I see so many kids wearing their cutest outfits. Their hair is perfectly styled, their shoes are polished, and their clothes are clean and tidy, which is a huge change from the wild style these kids wear every other day of the year.
On the other hand, my two daughters stand out among their classmates. That’s because I let my kids pick out their own outfits on picture day. I gave them the freedom to choose how they wanted to capture it…and it produced some fun and cute results.
In preschool, while other kids were wearing the cutest holiday outfits, one of my daughters insisted on wearing all black, leggings, socks, and shoes. She is a little Wednesday Addams in Santa’s Little Helper. In last year’s spring photos, my eldest daughter wore a dress with ruffled straps that she purposefully peeked out from a mismatched cardigan. She looks like the cutest little mess ever.
As an adult, looking back at my school photos makes me laugh (okay, cringe a little) because I change so much every year, which is what I want to see when I look at photos of my kids. When they grow up, I want to have 13 years of embarrassing photos that remind me of their entire childhood, and to me, there’s no better way to accurately capture their personalities than letting them choose their own clothes and hairstyles. I firmly believe that the way we dress and style is a form of expression and I don’t want my girls to hold back.
So far this approach works exactly as I expected. For example, when my oldest daughter was in kindergarten, she insisted on wearing a bright summer dress (even though these were fall photos), a giant JoJo Siwa bow on her head, and an Aurora Princess dress-up outfit necklace. This mismatched look, coupled with her choice of “glittery” background, and her proud toothless smile, is exactly how I want to remember her at that age. It’s only been two years since that photo and her style and personality have changed a lot.
I like School photos. Are they overpriced? Absolutely. Are they worth the money? Yes, every penny. There is nothing better than them. Those cheesy backgrounds, the nervous smiles, the lighting that’s always a little dark. School photos are iconic and I want my kids to be as excited about their photos as I am now.
I always love photo days. When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time carefully choosing what I was going to wear and how I was going to take care of my hair. In elementary school, I always wore some sort of floral pattern and can’t describe how amazing my mom’s big, bouncy curls were with her hot curling irons.
We were so excited in anticipation of getting the proofs back, and when the final order arrived, it was like a school version of Christmas morning. I would eagerly open the envelope, cut out the wallet-sized pages my mom ordered for me every year, and proudly pass on my portrait to my friends to hang on their locker doors, like in elementary school The same version of MySpace Top.
In an age where iPhones and camera rolls are filled with photos of kids, I sincerely cherish their school photos in a way I never expected. I even ordered physical prints for us so they wouldn’t get lost in a folder of digital images marked “to print” that I never got around to actually printing. These silly photos should be framed and displayed prominently in our home or I wouldn’t believe it.
If you are a parent of my child’s classmates and long for a class photo filled with graceful, smiling students to serve as a memory for you and your child, I apologize. I know I can give it to my daughters Some Arguments for school photo day, but I didn’t want to. If someone wanted to wear a pink sequined dress, I would let her wear it. If the person insists on wearing a cat-ear headband, I make sure they are straight and give her an encouraging high-five before she walks into school. I want their school photos to be completely authentic, and nothing is more authentic than my children’s chaotic energy and self-expression.
Ashley Ziegler is a freelance writer who lives outside of Raleigh, North Carolina, with her two young daughters and husband. She has written on a range of topics throughout her career, but particularly enjoys covering all things pregnancy, parenting, lifestyle, advocacy and maternal health.
