The best description I can give for my latest Senior Portrait Session is…..fun, endearing, hilarious…and….did I mention how fun it was?
This is Connor, and he did such a great job during his Senior Portrait Session. He is an incredibly talented individual who plays violin (so do I, so this was just really cool in my humble opinion), sings, and the list goes on. He is just super talented!
One of the best parts, though, is that his mother was a part of his session. As a parent of three teenagers myself, I was really excited about this, as the relationship with your teenagers (or children, for those of you who still have little ones) is vital for their future.  It is just really neat, though, to be able to have semi-adult conversations with your kids when they are teens and to continue to get to know them. It isn’t that parenting teenagers is easy all the time, because honestly, it is not always easy.   Building parent – teen relationships is something of great value to me personally, and I enjoyed capturing their transparent and easy going relationship during the session. As a photographer, I desire to capture natural interactions between people. Heather and Connor made my job very easy, and made me laugh out loud so many times!
What are some ways that you connect with your teens and/or children?  How do you experience JOY in your home?  We have found that spending intentional time with our kids to be effective.  It doesn’t have to be complicated and expensive.  We have been making it a priority at our house to have a 10-15 minute family check-in time each evening.  We try not to talk to much (which can be challenging), and try to just listen and ask questions.  Then, we ask each of our teens how we can pray for them and support them.  Game night can also be a great way to connect in a simple way to just laugh.  (Spoons, anyone?)  We are a work in progress, because it is really easy to brush off this time when we are exhausted.  However, we also know the benefit of having a positive and supportive relationship with our kids.  Keep working on it  one step at a time, one minute at a time, and sometimes one second at a time.  Just keep trying!  🙂