What does a child expect from an adult? Questions that take shape in a group playful-therapeutic experience

Abstract

This paper raises the question of what a child expects from an adult, and how that question takes shape in a group playful – therapeutic experience. The general objective is to problematize the relationship child – adult, starting from a necessary asymmetry between them: some functions are identified and an adult is called to support them. We investigate how to establish legality through the analysis of four vignettes regarding our experience which show part of the work process carried out with one of the children involved. We conclude that it is necessary to preserve the asymmetry between children and adults as a condition of unavoidable legality so that a subject can emerge from the language managing its own place of enunciation in the social bond.