ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on important themes that emerge when engaging children and their parents in therapy. At the early stages of engaging children and parents in therapy, the therapist will "notice" more than can be addressed at that time. The process of engagement is concerned both with hearing the relevant accounts of each family member and creating a conversational context in which ideas are entertained, explored, and contextualized. It is necessary to gauge each of the ways of entering a child's world through the medium of the family's style of relating to one another, including attention to cultural, class, and gendered styles of address. Children are often anxious that they will be "put on the spot", and it can be useful to anticipate this reaction by explaining that all participants have the right to speak and listen as they wish.
