Progressivity and participation: children's management of parental assistance in paediatric chronic pain encounters

This article examines how older paediatric patients (10-18 years) initiate different actions, including the solicitation of parental assistance, to accomplish the task of answering clinicians' symptom questions in three paediatric tertiary care clinics. Using the qualitative method of conversation analysis to examine children's symptom accounts in 69 video-recorded outpatient intake visits, I describe four child-initiated strategies that preclude, solicit and limit parental assistance in the interactional environment of having difficulties in providing an answer. These strategies are: children's own answer searches, children's solicitations of corroboration, children's solicitations of an answer, and children's answer completions. Supported by the clinicians' strong commitment to child-centredness, children manage to solicit parental assistance without losing the opportunity to present their own symptom accounts.