Children who do not want to attend meetings

Robert:

If a child doesn’t feel ready or able to join a meeting, what other ways can we help them participate?

Marie:

So there are a lot of different ways of doing that and one of the very important things is that participation should not be considered a one off event in a child’s life. It shouldn’t be that there’s no participation throughout the school day and then the meeting comes and that’s where participation happens. Participation should be sort of woven into the fibre of the child’s school day. You can support a child to share their views in advance. You could do that using creative tools. You could submit these views in advance to the meeting. But it might also just be around collecting little bits and pieces of the child’s everyday life and sharing that in a meeting format. And at all times respecting the child’s right to say, actually this is not right for me right now, I don’t want to attend this meeting, maybe the next one. Children do have that right. And sometimes as adults we become so focused on getting them to the meeting that we forget that they do have a choice.