My Son the Photographer...and Painful Lessons in Parenting

Anthon is my mini-me. I feel flattered that he likes things that I like. He likes tacos, yakitori, sports, and a lot of other things that I like. He's a morning person like me, which I think is unfortunate for Shelley.

Shortly before we left for Japan, Shelley gave him her old 35mm point-and-shoot film camera. It's funny to see him act out how he perceives me and Shelley's incessant picture taking of him. Anthon puts the camera up to his eye, backwards no less, and says, "Dad, look at me, say cheese." He pretends to take the picture and without fail says in a matter of fact voice, "cute." When he's feeling like a true photographer, he hunts for my tripod, pulls it out and pretends that's his camera.

I thought that this would be the end of my post, but unfortunately, I learned a really interesting lesson about parenthood from Anthon, his camera and my lack of seeing the forest for the trees.

We had a family outing one night and I brought my camera along to take some pictures. Anthon ran to get his camera, but I told him that he couldn't bring it along for a variety of reasons, namely he would drop it and because I said so. He freaked out of course and resisted any attempts by me to put it back in his room. I kept getting mad because he wasn't obeying his Dad and it never occured to until we were making our way to the train station that the only reason he wanted to bring his camera was because I brought my camera. It killed me to think that I was being so focused on Anthon obeying me that I totally missed the intent of his actions.


I'd like to think that I've learned my lesson. I wore a french cuff shirt to church on Sunday and I wore the cuff links that Anthon gave me for Father's Day last year. Anthon of course wanted to wear cuff links like his Dad to church. Well, I've never seen a french cuff shirt for a two year old...have you? Shelley helped Anthon put on one of my cuff links into his shirt and he was happy and showed it off that day to others.