ABSTRACT
Whereas research on children’s well-being in education has largely focused on adult perspectives
rather than on children’s understandings, recent scholarship argues for a stronger focus on
children’s experience and perceptions of their own well-being. Adopting a narrative approach,
this article puts children’s stories centre stage as we explore a philosophy of well-being for early
childhood in two distant but similar countries, Finland and Aotearoa New Zealand. The
article reports on two independent narrative studies (one from Finland, the other from New
Zealand) in which children tell about their own well-being. Both studies acknowledge the diffi-
culties in obtaining unfettered access to children’s experiences and emphasize the importance of
human connectedness and community in children’s lives. After a brief introduction, the article
compares eudaimonic and hedonic conceptualizations of well-being. In keeping with the
characteristics of narrative, children’s perspectives form the central core of the text, with tenta-
tive observations offered by the author/researchers as they attempt to interpret the embedded
context of the children’s narratives. Connections are made between the two philosophical
understandings of well-being and some pedagogical considerations about children’s lives.
