They say the eyes are the window to the soul. I’m not going to get into my feelings on that, but I can tell you that a fantastic way to learn more about your child – aside from, you know, asking them stuff and spending time with them – is seeing the world through their eyes. 

In May (and I can’t believe that is now a couple of months ago), we had a weekend away. Glenn had a gig and we decided to make a family trip out of it. Once we’d decided, I started to panic a little inside. Glenn would be working for the whole Saturday. Glenn would not be really on holiday at all, let alone being another parent with me on holiday. The weather was forecast to be fairly terrible. What was I going to do with three girls for a whole day in an only vaguely familiar place as a solo parent, without just holing up in the hotel room using up the Wifi allowance?

Cameras. Glenn and I share a love of photography and in our early days/years together would do photo walks or a holiday challenge. Sigh. Okay, re-emerging from Memory Lane. I thought I would get each girl a kids camera from Kmart, and we could maybe have a photo challenge, where they would find things like something loud, something they want to eat, something in the air, a statue… When I had thought about this quite substantially, and become more and more excited about it, I ran the idea past Glenn. He was just as enthusiastic. I bought the cameras.

What has followed has been not so much a window but a magnifier into who they are. They each approached this device – in the sense of a tool, although the cameras are also a bit more screen than I would like – exactly as I expected them to. Exactly as I would predict them to according to their birth order. And honestly, if you looked at the photos and had to work out who owned which, you could work it out from the way they take photos.

Let me explain.

C: eldest child; 8 years old. Perfectionist. Leader. Precise. Observant. Loves patterns. Takes some photos of people but prefers subject matter of what she sees: waves at the beach, feet in the sand, a beautiful shell, sunset reflecting off the buildings and causing gold flecks to glimmer, the pattern on her new togs, the pattern of ripples on the pool surface, a smiley face in her Milo cereal. 

E: middle child; 5 years old. Observant. Loves seeing funny things. Very much a people person. Worked out how to get to the games on the camera faster than I could enunciate “ask first for games” as a rule, then that you could select a frame for a photo. Takes photos mostly of people, preferably in a frame (moustache, princess dress, forest scene, beach shells etc), mostly of groups of people, often as selfies with another person. Honestly, I have felt quite loved.

S: youngest child; 3 (AND A HALF) years old. Quietly notices things. Asks for help when needed. Accidentally records a five minute video and gets frustrated when it doesn’t go “cha-cheek”. Gets up close with the carpet pattern to take 47 photos of it. Accidentally puts the timer on and gets frustrated when it takes a while to go “cha-cheek”. Refuses to let me remove the timer function, then gets frustrated that the photos aren’t of what she thought she was taking a photo of because there is a difference in frames from when she pressed to when the timer finished. Takes 39 photos upside down of her chin and mouth and up her nose. Which all sounds very 3 (AND A HALF), but then we also see really thoughtful photos of Glenn with E snuggling into him as he shows her something or looks at her camera photos, the pictures on the hotel wall, people and dogs on the boardwalk, remarkably straight photos of the ocean and the beach, and a most glorious and beautiful selfie that I think I will print. Slightly blurry, but – oof. Beautiful.

Each girl, each camera, each personality. Magnified.