The Faces Project

January, 2021

Okay. I have a little pipe dream. Will you help me make it happen? This idea for this project began about nine months into the pandemic when I started to feel unable to meet the needs of my socially curious 14-month-old. It is becoming clear that my child wants to see faces, to interact with people, and to share space with others, as we all have done in our lives. And then I read this article from the New York Times and it cemented my desire to increase our exposure to other humans in a safe way. My first child, now five, has enough social experience to recall interactions with others and understands the feeling of being out in the world. My little one, though, has never experienced being on a crowded street, having an interaction with a stranger in the grocery store, or seeing two (or more!) people outside of their parents interact with each other. We don’t get a lot of mask-free, close up grandparent time, and there are definitely lots of interactions missing in the lives of our children right now. 

So The Faces Project was born.

Young children, especially infants and toddlers, learn social cues by looking at the facial expressions of others around them. I wanted to find other adults and children for my child to witness their facial expressions and practice social cues. I looked online, but didn’t find anything like what I was looking for for my child. There are lots of people online, but they are always doing something that distracts from their faces. The purpose of this project is to be slow and present, as we often are when we have short interactions with young children. 

I would love to make a video for my child and for other people’s children too. I invite you to participate and to share this page with your friends. If you are a human, and you have a face, please join this project. I am hoping we can get an array of humans to participate. Different hair styles, different skin colors, different facial features, different cultures, different different. If you are fat - wonderful! If you are thin - great! If you are bald- fabulous! If you are very hairy - I love it! If you use an electrolarynx or have lots of piercings, if you have a birthmark or if you wear a hijab or if you only use sign language - please make a video! This is not a project where we want to hear from one type of person. We are not looking for polished/mainstream/beige. We are looking for REAL LIFE. My child’s world is very small right now (I think we are all going through this), so bring me a video of YOU- let’s open up the world a little bit for our littlest children!

Tips for your video:

-Please create your video in a LANDSCAPE ORIENTATION. In other words, hold your phone the long way, not up and down.  

-Do the left picture, not the right. Image credit

-Make the video short- 30 seconds or less. We are not looking for big story telling or lots of words, just a moment to share with a child. 

-Fill the frame with your head and face, or show yourself from the chest up. We want to be able to clearly see your two eyes, nose, mouth, and full face so your expressions are visible (to the extent that this is culturally appropriate for you). Remember: this is an opportunity for young children to see facial expressions on lots of people like they haven’t seen before.

-Make sure you are in a well-lit space and the sound quality is not echo-y or with too much background noise. 

-Be friendly, engaging, not too loud, nothing surprising (“Peek-a-boo” is great, but remember to be gentle with those “boos!” Young children are very sensitive and in real life you would interact with them based on the give and take of their reaction. You won’t have this kind of feedback for your video, so you must imagine how a very young child would react to your energy.) 

-Be yourself. Imagine you are interacting with your child or grandchild, your niece/nephew/nibling, your friend’s child, your neighbor, a child you meet momentarily in the grocery store, etc. 

-This video is directed at children under three years old, so language is just starting. Speak simply. But that said, you may speak in any language that is comfortable to you. It doesn’t need to be English! 

Here are some ideas of things you could do in your video (Not an exhaustive list): 

• Ask the child (in the camera) a question (“What color are your socks? Mine are...”) 

• Share your name and tell how old you are, or share a basic greeting. 

• Count the buttons on the shirt you’re wearing.

• Tell what you got at the grocery store earlier that day.  

• If you have a partner, you could sit in the frame with your partner and smile at each other or say, “I love you.”

• Sing “The Itsy-Bitsy-Spider” or another short children’s song.

• Show your cat and share a game you like to play with them.

• Tell something about where you grew up (“I grew up in an apartment in a big city. I had four siblings and we liked to go ice skating on the weekends...etc.”)

• Peel a clementine and eat it.

• Grab a sock puppet and have a short conversation with it. 

• Introduce yourself with your face in the main frame of the video, then show your skateboard and do an alley-oop (or some skateboarding move- I don’t know what they are).

• Be real. You can tell a short story of one time when you fell down and you cried. Show the child a sad face.

• Practice expressions. (“This is the face I make when I am surprised/happy/scared/angry/etc.” “When I don’t like something, I say, ‘No, thank you.”)

• Don’t say anything at all, but show your face in the frame and then bring up your knitting work and show us how you knit a row of something.

• Make a mistake (ex. Lace a shoe and miss a hole - this might be tricky. Can you show lacing a shoe and still show your facial expression? Just a brainstorming thought here…).

• Show a leaf from your yard.

• Laugh with a friend or with your own children (also in the frame, also close up so we can see their expressions).

• Make animal sounds.

• Blow into a trumpet.

• Strum a guitar.

• Remember- you can just chat. You don’t have to be doing something. Also, you don’t have to be dramatically making a facial expression. Your resting face is still a real face. 

Things to avoid:

• Jokes - infants and toddlers are very literal and jokes can be confusing (but you can still do something silly!).

• Shouting - nothing startling, please- This is meant to be a slow, exploratory opportunity for young children.

• Technology/graphics - no need for technology on our videos- we are already introducing children to technology probably a little too early by sharing this video with them. Let’s keep them planted in the real world as best we can. 

• Moving the camera - keep the focus on you, without jostling the camera or changing the background. It can be overstimulating to a young child to see too much movement on the screen.

• Distractions - remember- you can use a prop if you feel like you need something to talk about, but the main goal is to share your face and facial expressions. Keep YOU as the focus.

• Names of children - remember, while you may be keeping in mind a specific child as you speak to the camera, I want to be able to share this video with lots of children and it may be confusing if you use one child’s specific name.

• Lengthy videos- This should be a short moment with the child. They are studying you, but they also have fairly short attention spans. Let’s keep them engaged! 30 Seconds or less, please!

When you have recorded your video, email it to me at Katie@theintentionalnanny.com with the subject line “The Faces Project Video Submission.”

I will put the videos together as I receive them and post to my YouTube channel. There is no compensation for participating, and your participation (which you consent to by emailing me your video) means that you are willing to have your short video posted to this project on YouTube, social media, and on my website. 

Thank you for your support and participation! Let’s make our children’s quarantine world a little more interesting!