Professional Conversations With Children

Due to changing conceptions of children and childhood, talking with children is increasingly emphasized in legal, pedagogical, health, therapeutic, and social work contexts. A protective, paternalistic paradigm is gradually being replaced by a childhood paradigm in which children are positioned as subjects and social citizens. A broad range of professionals, like teachers, preschool teachers, psychologists, social workers, police officers, judges, nurses, physicians, and other professionals have conversations with children for various purposes. For some professionals, the conversation is the main and only professional tool, like for most therapists. Other professions use a range of practices, such as focused conversations as well as spontaneous conversations in the flow of the everyday life that they share with children in childhood institutions. That is the case for teachers ...