Father’s hilarious method to get his son to smile in first day of school photo goes viral

“Literally how we got our family pictures accomplished,” one person responded to the post on Twitter.

A father’s Twitter post has gone viral after he shared a hilarious photo of how his son reacted while getting his picture taken at school.

On the platform last week, Adam Perry posted two side-by-side photos of his son smiling on his first day of school. One image showed that the child had a slightly strained, stiff smile, while the other image appeared to showcase him in the midst of laughing.

In the caption of the post, the parent noted how he got his son to smile naturally.

“My son when I tell him to smile vs when I yell out ‘poop!,’” Perry wrote in the post, which has more than 11,400 retweets and nearly 300,000 likes.

Speaking to The Independent, Perry said that he uses this picture taking trick “all the time with [his son] and still will as long as it works”.

On Twitter, multiple people responded to Perry’s post and praised him for making his child smile. Some even remarked that they’ve used his technique themselves when taking photos.

“This reminds me of one of my wedding photos - the photographer told him to say something funny and he whispers “butts,’” one wrote.

“Poop & fart jokes are universally funny,” another added. “Don’t be acting like you didn’t laugh at that stuff back in the day.”

A third person wrote: “Literally how we got our family pictures accomplished. Poop jokes.”

Speaking to Good Morning America, Perry noted that while the preschooler is a bit “shy,” he’s also “sweet and silly,” with a “fun sense of humour”.

He went on to explain that he always takes photos of his child on the “first day of school,” and this time, he was “in a bit of a hurry and having a hard time getting good pictures”, which is why he “yelled out ‘poop’”.

“My son always has the funniest smile when he’s trying too hard,” Perry said. “I learned at some point that if I just yelled out ‘POOP’ and snapped the picture quick, it always worked out way better. In this case, it was a pretty dramatic comparison, so I thought I’d share it.”

The children’s book author also confessed how shocked he was when the post went viral, since he only “expected five to ten people to like it”. However, he said that the photos continued to go viral on multiple social media platforms, which ultimately helped him realise just how relatable the post was to other people.

“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,” Perry said.