Photo Therapy in Shaping Little Minds | Kira Jeffrey Photography | Charlotte, NC

Keeping Mental Health Awareness Month at the forefront, let’s get into a bit of fun knowledge on the power of family photography!

As parents, it can be a constant battle to protect your children’s mental health and self-esteem. With bullying on the rise, social media playing a larger role in children’s early childhoods and mental health awareness increasing, it can feel like so much pressure to shield them! Photo therapy is one remarkably effective habit to help in this battle. This method of therapy involves using family photographs and videos to foster a sense of belonging and reinforce the family bonds. Revisiting these memories together as a family not only provides the opportunity for quality time, but also visually and emotionally reinforces the child’s place within the family, thus having a positive impact on their mental health. Photo therapy has proven positive impacts on the way children report their satisfaction with their appearance and self-esteem. It may seem like a small thing, but it may be a great tool to add to the arsenal in the fight to develop resilience and positive self-image and narrative in little ones that will guide them well into their futures. While children may not carry many of their young memories with them as they grow up, they will be met daily with visual reminders of positive and happy times with their loving family. These children will also go on to be more likely to hang photos of their own children someday!

The Research:

“We cannot underestimate the power of photographs to keep us feeling linked to others and belonging. They cement us into our networks. For children in particular, looking at photographs is part of the socializing process; learning who you are and where you fit into the family. By displaying photographs of your children at different stages of their lives, we are making a very public statement that we are proud of them“.

-Professor Geoff Beattie, Head of School and Dean of Psychological Sciences at the University of Manchester

“I think it’s important to show a family as a family unit. It is so helpful for children to see themselves as a valued and important part of that family unit. A photographer’s job is to create and make the image look like a safe holding space for kids where they are safe and protected. Kids get it on a really simple level”

“I think family photographs should be on the wall. I am very conservative about self-esteem and I think placing a family photo someplace in the home where the child can notice it every day without having to turn on a device or click around on a computer to find it really hits home for that child this sense of reassurance and comfort. They have a certainty about them and a protecting quality that nurtures a child. That they are loved and cared for.“

-Licensed Psychologist David Krauss

Lastly, my favorite quote, “Family photography lets children learn who they are and where they fit. They learn their genealogy and the uniqueness of their own family and it’s story. When a child sees a family portrait with them included in the photograph, they say to themselves: ‘These people have me as part of what they are, that’s why I belong here. This is where I come from“. Thus proving that these photographs impact not only their self-esteem and mental health, but their sense of identity. That’s just one more reason why I love what I do!

-Licensed Psychologist Judy Weisner