Page 66 - Meeting with Children Book

P a ge | 64

conversations with all ages of children and youth.
This provides the most non-directive way of hearing
about important matters and allows the child to
speak through objects or images. The use of
metaphor is powerful and bypasses the need for
evaluative thinking, and what children say about
their products or expressions is what is most
important. Meeting with all children no matter what
level of conflict their parents are experiencing is an
important principle.

What Does the Meeting with
Approach Entail?
Children

Meeting with Children approach includes 2-meetings
where preferably, each parent brings the child to one
meeting. During the meetings, children and youth
are offered activities through which they can share
ideas, thoughts, feelings and things that are
important to them. It is a voluntary process, and no
child is required to participate. To ensure it is the
child or youth’s decision not to participate, children
are asked to come to at least one meeting so that
they can express this directly to the practitioner. Two
meetings instead of one minimizes the chances of
having an off-day, may minimize undue influence by
one parent, offers the child a way to feel comfortable
and important, allows the child to add to their
previous comments or concerns and can diminish
tokenistic inclusion of a child. The approach is non-