Dad's Hilarious Hack to Make His Son Smile for Photos Is Doing Wonders | "This Is Very Helpful Data"

Camera-shy people know the pain of trying to flaunt a genuine smile when they are getting clicked. Kids feel this pain acutely when their parents are trying to take cute pictures of them and they have absolutely no idea how to pose or what to do in front of the camera.

This dad on Twitter has seemingly found the solution to this parenting struggle—trying to get the kid to smile for the camera. Adam Perry is finally able to help his son flash a bright smile instead of a strained grimace while clicking his photo and the internet is loving this hilarious parenting hack. Adam’s tweet has garnered over 290,000 likes on the platform and even the creator of the viral tweet can’t believe it.

Perry shared two pictures of his son side by side on Twitter and captioned the post: "My son when I tell him to smile vs when I yell out 'poop.'" That surely worked because, in the second picture, Perry’s preschooler can be seen flashing an angelic smile. Perry also spoke to Good Morning America and described his son as "shy" but also "sweet and silly" with a "fun sense of humor." He shared the story behind this viral tweet and confirmed that the shots were taken on his son's first day of school.

"We always take pictures on the first day of school and we were in a bit of a hurry and having a hard time getting good pictures," Perry explained to the outlet. "My son always has the funniest smile when he's trying too hard. I learned at some point that if I just yelled out 'POOP' and snapped the picture quickly, it always worked out way better. In this case, it was a pretty dramatic comparison, so I thought I'd share it." 

Perry, who is a children's book author, was taken aback by the viral response to his tweet. "I expected 5 to 10 people to like it. Then it kept climbing and climbing and it's now at 297k likes. Then it went to the first page on Reddit and viral on Instagram and Facebook. This post must have really resonated with people, and I've gotten tons of messages from people that are using this trick and getting great pictures of their kids, which to me, is the best part of all this."

Several parents on Twitter applied Perry’s viral hack of shouting something funny before taking pictures of their kids. They also shared their shots on the platform.

"My cute little ol' Grama used to shout, 'sex!' right before family photos and it always made for the best photos," @AshleyGWinter tweeted. @ForgetTheMoose wrote: "I can just hear school photographers yelling poop several hundred times on picture day."

"For anyone trying to successfully photograph a kid, this is very helpful data," tweeted @MarisaElana. 

Thanks to Perry’s viral post, parents might now succeed in making their kids flash genuine smiles for the camera. The hack might work on grown-ups too.