Film your kids without saying a word

I watched my childhood VHS tapes recently. Every clip is the same. Someone is talking to me, asking me to do something for the camera. Wave. Smile. Say something. And the clips are 10, maybe 15 seconds long.

Not a single video of me just playing around. Being myself. Without knowing anyone is watching.

So when my son Eduard was born, I started doing something different. I pull out my phone and film him for two or three minutes straight. No talking to him, no interacting. Just him doing his thing. Playing at the playground, stacking stuff on the floor, whatever he's into at that moment. The best part is he doesn't even know we're recording.

We used to do this way more when he was tiny. Now it's maybe once or twice a week.

The real value of those videos isn't for us. It's for him. Because one day he'll see not just quick clips where someone is asking him to smile, but what his everyday actually looked like. How he really was. His personality, his focus, his calmness. 10-second clips don't capture that. Two minutes of just being himself do.

I wrote recently about recording voice messages for Eduard. This is the other half. The voice messages capture what we felt. The long videos capture who he was. Together, he'll get something I never had from my own childhood.