A Mother from Italy Shares Her Perspective from Inside the TOY for Participation Project

When I first came across the term child participation, I felt a tangle of emotions: curiosity, confusion, even a little shame, alongside an instinct that it somehow made sense. I had never heard the phrase before, but it seemed to point to something important, something I might already know but hadn’t fully named.

Child participation, as I came to understand, is the right of children to express their views, be heard, and take part in decisions affecting them. This applies at home, in school, in healthcare, and in their communities. One expert describes it as “not a one-off event, but an ongoing process of engagement” that begins at birth and evolves throughout a child’s development¹

Curious, I looked it up and found that Child participation is the right of children to express their views, be heard, and take part in decisions affecting them. This applies at home, in school, in healthcare, and in their communities, as an ongoing process for engaging a child from birth and evolves throughout a child’s development.¹ Moreover, this right is institutionalized by the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child.²

At first, I found myself defensive. No one loves or protects my children more than I do. How could this new terminology imply I hadn’t been respectful of them? I hadn’t heard about “child participation” during my pregnancies or early parenting years. The literature, though well-meaning, sometimes felt like a quiet reprimand. But as I read more, I began to see that the concept went deeper than just caring for your child or giving them occasional choices. It is about actively and continuously recognizing their agency, in age-appropriate ways, across all areas of life³.

As I continued reading, especially practical examples that described what participation looks like at different stages of development, something shifted. I realised this wasn’t a criticism. It was a framework. A language for things I had already been doing. And a reminder that I could have done them more consciously, more often.

When my first child, my son, was born, I attuned myself to his rhythms. I knew when he was hungry before he cried and prepared accordingly. I watched him play, studied his emerging skills, and introduced new activities to support the next stage of his development.

When my twin daughters came along, I learned their distinct signals, watched how they expressed preferences and needs, and adapted my responses accordingly. As all three children grew, I paid attention to their emotions, what frightened them, what angered them, and worked with them to make sense of their feelings and build healthy ways to respond.

As their language and reasoning developed, I learned to listen more deeply, ask open questions, and explain things in ways they could grasp. Today, with teens in the house, participation looks different. When they raise an issue with a teacher, we talk through perspectives and options, but it is up to them to write the email or make the call. When we visit the doctor, I make sure they are the ones addressed, that their understanding is checked, and that the final decision reflects their voice. At this stage, it can be tricky to know how much to step in and how much to step back—how to guide without overstepping, and support without taking over. But as with parenting from the very beginning, there is no instruction manual—I just do my best.

In short, I have been engaging in participation all along. I just didn’t know it had a name. And when I think about many of their teachers, I see they were practicing it too, even without the terminology. Of course, I also recognise that part of this came from our context. We live a middle-class life, with access to education, healthcare, and space to reflect. Much of it came from instinct. But I also know this: if I had known earlier what child participation was, and what it looks like across childhood, I could have done it even better.

That is why I am grateful to be part of the TOY for Participation project. We are helping early childhood practitioners and families understand how to support children’s participation from the very beginning, through daily interactions, developmentally appropriate dialogue, and real decision-making. Because when children grow up knowing their voices matter, they become adults who listen, reflect, and contribute to a more respectful world³.

Footnotes

1. Lansdown, G. (2010). The Realisation of Children’s Participation Rights: Critical Reflections. In Percy-Smith, B., & Thomas, N. (Eds.), A Handbook of Children and Young People’s Participation (pp. 11–23). Routledge.
2. United Nations (1989). Convention on the Rights of the Child, Articles 12–13.
3. Thomas, N. (2007). Towards a theory of children’s participation. The International Journal of Children’s Rights, 15(2), 199–218.

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