World Children's Day. What it means to actually hear a child.

In my clinic in Vienna, I ask children what they think is happening. Not the parents — the...

In my clinic in Vienna, I ask children what they think is happening. Not the parents — the children. In most clinical settings, this is unusual. The adult brings the child; the adult explains the problem; the clinician addresses the adult. The child is present but not consulted. What I find, when I ask the child directly, is almost always useful information that the adult's account did not contain.

The child's account is not always accurate. It is not always complete. But it contains something that the adult's account does not: the child's experience of what is happening. And the child's experience of what is happening is, in most cases, directly relevant to the clinical picture. The anxiety that the parent describes as 'coming from nowhere' is often, from the child's perspective, coming from a very specific somewhere that they have not been asked about.

In my clinic in Vienna, I ask children what they think is happening. Not the parents — the children. In most clinical settings this is unusual. The adult brings the child; the adult explains the problem; the clinician addresses the adult. What I find, when I ask the child directly, is almost always useful information that the adult's account did not contain.

This is the clinical case for Article 12. The domestic case is the same, but the stakes are smaller and the occasions are more frequent. The parent who asks the child what they think before making a decision affecting them has access to information that the parent who doesn't ask doesn't have. The information changes the decision. The changed decision produces better outcomes.

The specific form of asking that matters is not the grand consultation. It is the ordinary Tuesday moment: 'What do you think about this?' asked with genuine interest and genuine openness to the answer changing something. The ritual question — 'do you agree?' followed immediately by the plan that was already decided — is not consultation. Children recognise it as ritual, and they respond to it as ritual, which means they stop reporting genuine opinion and start performing expected agreement.

Genuine consultation looks different. It slows down. It creates a pause before the decision. It treats the child's response as actual data. It sometimes produces a different outcome than the one the parent initially planned. The child notices this. And noticing that their opinion actually changed something is one of the most powerful developmental experiences available.

I have changed my clinical recommendation because of what a child told me. This is not weakness. It is the correct use of available information. The parent who changes a decision because of what the child said is doing the same thing — and the child who sees this learns something about their own efficacy that no lesson can teach.

I have changed my clinical recommendation because of what a child told me. This is not weakness. It is the correct use of available information. The parent who changes a decision because of what the child said is doing the same thing — and the child who sees this learns something about their own efficacy that no lesson can teach.

In the last week, did you ask your child what they think about something that affects them — and then let the answer actually influence what you decided?

And: does your child currently believe that their opinion matters — that when they tell you what they think, something sometimes changes as a result?

This week: ask one real question and let the answer actually matter. 'What do you think we should do about X?' Then change something about what you do based on the answer. Tell them you changed it because of what they said.

La semana que viene: Marian sobre Adviento — y la biología de la anticipación.

Names of people and brands in these editions are changed. Whoever was there and reads this knows what we are talking about.

Marian adds, from London: The neuroscience here is clear. The child who believes their input matters has a different pattern of neural activation in the prefrontal cortex — the seat of planning, decision-making, and self-regulation — than the child who believes their input is irrelevant. The belief that one's actions have consequences is the biological foundation of agency. Agency is the opposite of anxiety. — Marian