På sporet af det gode børneliv

– voksnes bekymring og børns perspektiver på problemer i hverdagslivet

Abstract

The article presents the results of an empirical work, which aims to investigate how social problems can be understood when these are explored from young children’s everyday lives. The analysis are based on empirical data derived from participatory observations of five young children (0-4 years) in and across the children’s everyday life contexts (e.g. dayca- re, family life and relieve family), as well as interviews with the children’s parents and selected professionals (e.g. childminders, family counselors). The children were selected because professionals are concerned about the children’s well-being, either due to parents’ social problems, health problems etc. or due to signs of concern regarding the children’s behavior. In order to remedy the problems the municipality launched preventive inter- ventions – e.g. counselling or special educa- tional interventions in the daycare. The article address a critique of a dominating focus on the identification of social problems based on knowledge about general risk factors. There is a lack of focus on examining how situations in the children’s concrete everyday lives become problematic for children and parents. Likewise there is not much focus on researching the children’s perspectives on how the helping interventions interact with the everyday life. The main point is that helping interventions must be directed at and located in the concrete situations where the problems occur and unfold. This approach requires situated knowledge about children and parents’ perspectives on their everyday life.