pictures or lack of say a thousand words

[Jolie40]

before NC, I'd always look @ pics on PD parent's walls

so many pics of GC's kids on wall plus artist's drawing of them
framed pics of  grandkids on every table available

look at the nice frame I gave with about 7 of best photos I picked out of child
notice: half of my child's photos have been replaced by another grandchild!
doesn't matter that there already are multiple photos of this other grandchild framed on coffee table

PD parent just had to replace my child's photos

also, PD parent always wanted the bigger more expensive photos from school pics or photo sessions
were any of those big photos ever put out on display? no


has this happened with others?
lack of displayed photos of your kids but oh so many of other grandkids?

[Call Me Cordelia]

Our kids were the only grandkids, so not exactly the same. My IL's had dozens of photos on display all through the house, but only a couple of photos including me, all from our wedding and also including themselves. Relatively few of our kids compared to other family members. Our FOC was confined to a single shelf on an entire wall of shelves, in a less public part of the house. No idea what they've done since NC.

[Dandelion]

My Ignoring Narcissistic mother has photos in frames displayed in her home:-

a) her mother
b) her grandparents
b) my only son

None of me!  Persona non gratis.   

I'm her only child, btw.

There are a few family albums.  There are a huge number of pictures of her by herself or with others (she was attractive). 

A few of me - I look very miserable and unsure as a young child :-(.   I don't smile till the age of 9.

My few photos of me as a young adult were however 'stolen' from me somehow and put in "her" album.  V odd.

I suspect family photos and albums are v. telling.

[Free2Bme]

YES!

My exMIL (highly NPD)  displayed dozens of pictures of grandchildren, children, etc.  She was the queen matriarch of the family, my updxh was the only son and the GC, four sisters, all had their 'roles'.  However, she is not 'maternal' or 'nurturing', at all.

Once I gave MIL a small, tasteful , framed collage of our children.  It was placed on the floor (shag carpet, lol) leaning against a coffee table.  I thought she would get around to giving it a place among the other dozens of framed photos of children, grandchildren, etc. 
Nope.  It sat in the SAME spot for 15 years. On the floor.

What was I thinking
Of course my children were the spawn of Satan since I bewitched the GC trophy son away from a very significantly disordered MIL.  She is one strange cookie.

[JustKeepTrying]

OMG I used to call to call it the photo switcheroo.  When we would visit my exMIL who is the GC today would be on display and those photos would reflected.  Never my children (even they went further than any other grandchild) and I would see the frames I gave her with photo just the week before transfered to the new GC.  Sigh.  Never could win with that women

[Jolie40]

thank you ALL for replies!

it seems the photo absence or how they treat photos of us/our kids is a common behavior
and a strange one at that

a normal family displays everyone's photos
however, our families are far from normal

[Call Me Cordelia]

Yeah... I barely have any photos displayed at all and I know it's a reaction to my weird parents making such a huge deal of them. I wrote about my IL's above, but my parents made a huge thing of them too. We got professional photos taken multiple times a year and they were all plastered on a big otherwise blank wall. We didn't really do professional portraits of our own kids much, which was a point of conflict, so they stole photos of the kids off my social media and got them printed and framed to put up in their house. (Just the kids, no current photos of me, except for the obligatory wedding photo.) My IL's everything was a photo op. So both me and DH don't like photos much. MIL would coordinate everyone's outfits for every day of vacation. We barely even take pictures when we go on vacation, etc.

It's probably normal and healthy to have family photos in your home but I just am not there quite yet. I'm really slow about getting anything framed or hung such that I have not a single photo of the youngest two kids displayed anywhere! Someday I'd like to get a handle on this for my kids' sake. I have no photos of my childhood now except for a couple of old yearbooks my parents dumped on me.

[IcedCoffee]

Photos are a big issue for my uBPDw. She is always looking at old photos of herself and saying how miserable she was. I'd like to put up lots of photos of family but she keeps taking them down. And now because she is dead set on divorce she takes no pictures with me in them. Plenty of the children, and many, many  selfies in which she almost tries to look miserable!

[1footouttadefog]

My husband's aunt had a box of framed pics in a hutch with shelves. She would open the door and change the pics out depending on who was visiting.

[Jsinjin]

My oCPD spouse collects every photo but in over 25 years of marriage we have never hung a single picture, painting, or anything on any wall in any house.   They're just stacked in places.  She doesn't want to harm the walls unless she knows exactly what would look right.   We keep every photo and kids art project but hang nothing.   I have a median room with TV and an old game console and I bought a set of three prints that says "insert coin", "ready player one" and "press start" in stylized painted canvas look and I had them framed and mounted and I hung them myself.   I swear we had a cardio stroke hyperventilation all at once! 

So ko, my wife would keep every photo but there would be no way to choose which one to display and Jo way to actually mount them.

[Free2Bme]

Wow jsinjin,  I can't imagine valuing sheetrock over looking at framed photos of my children/family.  That sounds very impersonal.

I hope you will have the freedom to enjoy decorated walls one day.

[1footouttadefog]

I  sitting in an empty house removing screws and plastic mollies from the wall and spackling the walls.

One can go overboard, lol.

On the other extreme, my pdh used to be OCD/OCPD about hanging pictures.  He still has a small level he used to use to check the pics.

I remember in one new house we compromised about the pic hanging situation.

I came up with the idea of putting a single bit of hardware in each location centered and at the same height.  I then adjusted the hanging cable or such to adjust. It worked great for that house.

Years later he fell off of that whole thing and made poster sized pics of himself and half haxardly plastered them all over his walls.

So strange when someone changes their core personality that much.