The Silent Child

On Silence, Interpretation, and Adult Responsibility

A child is sitting in a room with adults who want answers.

They ask what has happened. They ask how the child is feeling. They ask whom the child is afraid of, whom the child misses, and what the child wants to happen next.

The child does not answer.

Perhaps the child looks down at the floor. Perhaps the shoulders are drawn up towards the ears. Perhaps the child clutches the sleeve of a jumper or runs their fingers along the edge of the chair. Perhaps the child meets the adult’s gaze for a brief moment before looking away.

The silence fills the room.

The adults know that something important is at stake. The child may have experienced violence, neglect, abuse, loss, or separation. Perhaps the child has recently been removed from home. Perhaps the child is living with people they do not yet know. Perhaps the child has been told that they are now safe, although the body has not yet understood what safety means.

The adults need knowledge in order to help. They must assess risk, care needs, and what should happen next. They cannot simply wait and do nothing.

Yet this is precisely where the ethical problem arises:

What does the child’s silence mean?

We cannot avoid interpreting it. At the same time, we can never be certain that our interpretation is correct.

The silence may be fear. It may be loyalty. It may be shame, confusion, protest, mistrust, or exhaustion. The child may lack the words. The child may have learned that words are dangerous. Perhaps the child has spoken before and was not believed. Perhaps the child has experienced that telling the truth led to anger, punishment, or separation.

Or perhaps the child simply does not want to speak.

That, too, may carry meaning.

The adult’s responsibility therefore does not begin with making the child speak. It begins with asking what kind of space the child has been invited into, and whether that space truly makes it possible to say anything at all.

Silence Is Not Empty

We often think of silence as a lack of information. When the child does not speak, the conversation does not move forward. We do not obtain the knowledge we need in order to understand the case.

But silence is not necessarily empty.

It may be full of experience.

A child who does not answer is still doing something. The child is withholding. Waiting. Perhaps protecting themselves or someone else. The child is observing the adult. Trying to discover whether the room is safe, whether the questions are genuine, and whether the answers will be used against them.

Silence may be the child’s final form of control in a situation where others have already decided so much.

Adults decide where the child will live. They decide whom the child will meet, which questions will be asked, and what will be written down. They speak with parents, foster carers, teachers, physicians, and expert witnesses. The child’s life becomes the subject of meetings, assessments, and decisions.

In such a situation, silence may be the only thing the child still owns.

This does not mean that silence should be romanticised. A child may need help to find words. Silence may conceal suffering that requires protection. It may express that the child is trapped in fear or a conflict of loyalty.

But if we understand silence only as resistance, we risk overlooking the fact that it is also a form of communication.

The child may not say what has happened.

But the child shows that they are not yet able, willing, or ready to say it to us.

That, too, is knowledge.

The Adults’ Need for Clarity

Adults often find it difficult to tolerate a child’s silence.

We want to help, and help often requires action. In order to act, we need some understanding of the situation. We therefore ask more questions. We rephrase them. We explain that it is important to tell. We reassure the child that they have done nothing wrong.

All of this may be well intentioned.

Yet the questions may begin to serve the needs of the adults more than those of the child.

The professional needs to know what has happened. The parents want to know what the child has said. The foster carers need guidance. The system needs documentation. The case needs progress. The court may require an explanation.

The child is placed at the centre of many adults’ need for clarity.

When the child does not provide this clarity, the pressure increases. Silence becomes a problem that must be solved.

But for whom is the silence primarily a problem?

It may be difficult for the adults because it reveals the limits of our control. We are accustomed to language giving us access to experience. When words are absent, we do not know whether we have understood. We do not know whether we are doing the right thing.

The child’s silence makes our ignorance visible.

It may be tempting to fill it quickly.

When Adults Begin to Speak on the Child’s Behalf

Where the child does not speak, others begin to speak.

One person says that the child is traumatised. Another believes the child has been influenced by a parent. Some interpret the silence as loyalty. Others see it as a sign of fear, depression, insecure attachment, or oppositional behaviour.

Gradually, interpretations may become descriptions, and descriptions may become truths within the case.

The child is rejecting. The child is withdrawn. The child has little trust. The child does not want contact. The child confirms, through their reaction, that something serious has happened.

Some of these interpretations may be correct. The problem is not that adults attempt to understand. The problem arises when it is no longer clear where the child’s expression ends and the adult’s explanation begins.

A professional document may create an impression of certainty even when it rests on uncertain assumptions.

“The child does not wish to speak” may mean that the child has explicitly said so. It may also mean that the child did not answer the questions that were asked.

“The child shows fear of the father” may be based on clear reactions. It may also be an interpretation of the child looking down when the father’s name was mentioned.

The language of a report can conceal the distance between observation and meaning.

The adult must therefore continually distinguish between:

What have I actually observed?

What has the child expressed?

What is my interpretation?

What other explanations might be possible?

Such caution is not weak professional practice. It is professional integrity.

When Every Reaction Confirms the Same Story

A professional understanding may become so powerful that everything the child does is used to confirm it.

If the child speaks, it confirms the hypothesis.

If the child does not speak, that also confirms the hypothesis.

If the child approaches the parent, it is attributed to loyalty.

If the child keeps a distance, it is attributed to fear.

If the child laughs, it may be interpreted as a defence.

If the child cries, it may be interpreted as confirmation.

At that point, the interpretation has become closed.

An explanation that can account for every possible reaction can no longer be corrected by the child. It is not merely an understanding of the child. It has become a system from which the child cannot escape.

Hans-Georg Gadamer reminds us that every understanding begins with a pre-understanding. Experience and professional knowledge make some signs visible, but may also make other explanations less accessible.

The adult must therefore not only interpret the child.

The adult must also examine their own interpretation.

Why do I see this in this way?

Which previous cases or theories guide my attention?

What would show that I may be wrong?

A professional understanding must remain open to challenge from what the child actually expresses.

The child must be allowed to surprise us.

When the Words Do Not Exist

Adults often overestimate the availability of language.

We ask the child what they feel, why they acted in a certain way, and what they want. These questions assume that the experience already exists as a clear inner narrative that the child simply needs to retrieve.

This is not always the case.

Some experiences arise before language. Others are too overwhelming to be organised into words. The child may feel distress in the body without knowing what it means. The child may remember images, sounds, smells, or movements without being able to arrange them into a coherent story.

It may also be that the words available to the child do not fit what has happened.

How is a young child to describe that the adult they love is also the person they fear?

How are they to explain that they miss home and yet do not want to return?

How are they to say that something felt wrong when they did not understand what was happening?

The adult may interpret a lack of coherence as untruthfulness.

But children’s accounts, particularly under severe strain, do not always follow the orderly form adults expect. The account may be fragmented, contradictory, or full of gaps.

We must therefore be careful not to make verbal coherence the measure of truth.

At the same time, we must avoid the opposite error: interpreting every fragment as proof of a particular event.

The child needs help to express experience.

But that help must not produce the story the adults expect.

Drawing, Play, and the Body

Children express themselves in more ways than through direct speech.

They draw, play, move, repeat, avoid, and seek. They may use figures to show distance and closeness. They may create stories that resemble their own lives without our knowing how closely the two are connected.

Such expressions may provide important insight.

But they are not a codebook.

A dark colour does not necessarily mean sadness. A large figure does not automatically mean power. A play situation may be a working through of experience, but it may also be fantasy, imitation, or ordinary play.

The adult must be careful not to read a single, fixed meaning into the child’s expression.

We may ask:

“Can you tell me about this?”

“Who is this person?”

“What is happening here?”

But even such questions can be leading if tone of voice, sequence, or repetition tells the child which answer the adult hopes to hear.

Children are attentive to adults’ reactions. They notice relief, anxiety, surprise, and satisfaction. They may try to give the answer that makes the situation calmer, or the answer they believe will ensure that they are allowed to remain where they are.

We must therefore not only listen to the child’s expressions.

We must also examine how our own presence shapes them.

The Right to Be Heard Is Not a Duty to Disclose

Children have the right to be heard in matters that concern them. This right is fundamental. For far too long, decisions have been made over children’s heads without their experiences and wishes carrying real weight.

But the right to be heard must not be transformed into a duty to speak.

The child must be given a genuine opportunity to express themselves. Information must be provided in a form the child can understand. The child must know who will be told what they say and what consequences the information may have.

But the child must also be allowed to say:

“I do not want to answer.”

“Not now.”

“I do not know.”

“I want this person to leave the room.”

Silence may be part of the child’s participation.

This does not mean that adults can always leave the matter unresolved. If the child is in danger, adults must act even without the child’s explanation. The child’s right to protection may require interventions the child does not want or understand.

But then we must be honest about what we are doing.

We must not pretend that the decision belongs to the child when it is in fact the adults’ decision.

The adult bears responsibility for the decision.

The child should not have to carry the blame for the consequences of what they did or did not disclose.

Time as Part of the Help

Professional systems work according to deadlines. Meetings must be held, assessments completed, and decisions made.

The child’s time does not necessarily follow the system’s time.

Trust cannot be decreed. It develops through experience.

The child may need to meet the same adult several times before believing that the adult will remain. The child may need to discover that the adult can tolerate anger, withdrawal, and rejection without disappearing or punishing them.

Sometimes the most responsible thing we can do is wait.

Not passively. Not without attending to the child’s safety. But by allowing the relationship to develop without demanding immediate openness.

Waiting can be difficult because it may not look like effective action. There is no rapid progress to report. The child still has not spoken.

Yet something decisive may be taking place.

The child may be discovering that this adult does not force their way in. That the adult returns. That silence does not provoke irritation. That the child does not have to produce a story in order to deserve care.

Only then may words become possible.

Time is therefore not merely a framework around help.

Time can be part of the help itself.

Tolerating That the Child Does Not Confirm Us

Adults can become deeply attached to their own understanding of a child’s life.

We may have worked on a case for a long time. We have read documents, spoken with many people, and formed a coherent account of what the child has experienced.

Then the child says something that does not fit.

The child wants to return to the parent we believe has failed. The child misses the adult we think they fear. The child rejects the foster home we regard as safe. The child says that nothing happened, although other information points in another direction.

The adult may think that the child does not understand their own best interests. That the child is loyal, influenced, or afraid.

That may be correct.

But here, too, we must ensure that the explanation does not make the child’s own voice meaningless. If everything the child says that supports our understanding is treated as authentic, while everything that contradicts it is explained away, the child has no voice in practice.

Listening to a child does not mean that we always follow the child’s wishes.

It means that what the child says has real significance for our understanding.

The child’s perspective may be limited, contradictory, and shaped by the situation.

The same is true of the adults’ perspective.

Silence Is Not Evidence

In some cases, silence is treated as confirmation.

A child who does not deny something is assumed to agree. A child who does not defend a parent is understood as afraid. A child who does not want to disclose is assumed to be hiding something.

But silence cannot simply be turned into evidence.

Children may remain silent because they are afraid. They may also remain silent because the question feels unfamiliar, because they do not understand, because they are tired, or because they do not wish to participate in the adults’ conflict.

When adults need certainty, silence may be made to carry more meaning than it can bear.

This is particularly serious when decisions have far-reaching consequences. Children must be protected from violence and abuse. At the same time, assessments must be professionally sound and must distinguish clearly between observation, information, and interpretation.

The ethical obligation moves in two directions.

We must not overlook suffering because the child is unable to speak.

But neither must we place a particular story inside the child merely because the silence leaves room for it.

Offering Language Without Taking Over the Story

A good helper often wants to give the child language.

This can be valuable. Children need words for emotions, boundaries, violations, and needs. Language can make experiences more manageable and help the child understand that what happened was not their fault.

But there is a difference between offering language and putting words into the child’s mouth.

We may say:

“Some children become afraid when adults shout. Is it like that for you?”

But we must tolerate the child saying no.

We may say:

“It is possible to love someone and still be afraid of them.”

But we must not decide that this is the child’s experience.

Language should open possibilities, not close down meaning.

To help is to make it easier for the child to express their own world, not to replace that world with our professional narrative.

This requires discipline.

The adult must restrain the urge to understand too quickly. We must remain close without intruding, curious without examining the child as an object.

Help should give the child greater ownership of their story, not less.

Adult Power

An encounter between a child and a professional is never free from power.

The adult often determines the room, the time, and the subject. The adult may write down what is said and pass it on. The adult’s interpretation may affect where the child lives, whom the child is allowed to see, and how others later understand the child.

Even a kind adult carries this power.

Power is not necessarily the same as abuse. Children need adults who use authority to protect and take responsibility.

But power must be acknowledged in order to be used with care.

The professional cannot place the entire responsibility for the encounter on the child by saying that the child “does not cooperate”. The child’s reaction arises within a situation that the adult also helps to create.

Perhaps the questions come too quickly.

Perhaps the child does not know what will happen to the answers.

Perhaps the child has already met many adults and sees no reason to trust another one.

The adult must ask:

Have I made this room understandable to the child?

Does the child know who I am and why I am asking?

Does the child know how the information will be used?

Does the child have genuine choices?

Can I tolerate the child not giving me the answer I want?

Power becomes ethical when the person who holds it takes responsibility for how it works.

When Adults Must Act Without the Child’s Words

There are situations in which the child’s silence cannot be the only guide.

A young child cannot be expected to protect themselves. An adult cannot say:

“The child did not disclose anything, so we did nothing.”

The absence of words is not the absence of responsibility.

Professionals must assess other information, the child’s care situation, physical signs, behaviour, and the overall picture. They must cooperate with others and sometimes act under conditions of uncertainty.

Hermeneutic humility is not passivity.

It means acting without pretending to know more than we do.

We may say:

“We are concerned, but we do not know the whole story.”

“We must protect the child while continuing to understand.”

“This decision is ours, not the child’s.”

In this way, the adult can bear responsibility without using the child as the justification for everything.

The child should neither have to save themselves by speaking nor be made responsible for the adults’ choices.

Bearing Witness

Sometimes the child does not primarily need someone who asks questions.

The child needs someone who can bear witness.

A witness is not merely someone who records facts. A witness is someone who can remain present in the face of something difficult without turning away or making the experience their own.

To bear witness for a child may mean saying:

“I can see that this is difficult.”

“You do not have to tell me everything now.”

“I will come back.”

“What happened is not your responsibility.”

Such statements do not resolve the case. But they may create a space in which the child is no longer alone with the experience.

The witness does not demand that the child produce a complete story.

The witness keeps open the possibility that a story may one day be told.

The child may later find different words. The child may understand what happened differently when they are older. The child may discover connections that no one saw at the time.

For this reason, adult documentation must also remain humble. What is written about the child today may follow the child for a long time. A report should not freeze the child within a single interpretation.

A child is always more than what could be understood in one meeting.

When the Child Speaks

Sometimes the child begins to speak.

Perhaps the words come suddenly and outside the planned meeting. In the car, at bedtime, during play, or while the adult is preparing food. Perhaps the child begins with something that appears insignificant.

The adult may be tempted to ask more questions immediately.

But caution is necessary here as well.

The child should be allowed to set the pace as far as this is professionally responsible. The adult can listen, acknowledge, and clarify without turning the account into an interrogation.

The most important thing may be to show that the words can be endured.

That the adult does not fall apart.

That the child does not have to comfort the adult.

That responsibility is placed where it belongs.

When a child speaks about something difficult, the child is not merely providing information.

The child is entrusting the adult with part of their world.

Such trust creates an obligation.

The Silent Child Is Still a Speaking Human Being

The child’s silence reminds us of a boundary.

We cannot demand full access to another person’s inner life. Not even when the other person is a child, and not even when we act in the name of care.

The child needs to be understood.

But the child also needs protection from adults’ desire to understand too much, too quickly, and with too much certainty.

The adult’s responsibility is therefore twofold.

We must try to see what the child cannot yet say.

And we must be careful not to turn our own interpretation into the child’s truth.

This requires knowledge, experience, and professional judgement. But it also requires patience, self-reflection, and humility.

We must be able to act under conditions of uncertainty.

We must be able to protect without owning the story.

We must be able to listen even when no words come.

The silent child is not without a voice.

The voice may be present in the gaze, the body, the distance, the play, the protest, or the silence itself. But these expressions are not ours to fill with whatever meaning we choose.

They are an invitation to caution.

Perhaps the most important task is not to break the silence, but to create a space in which the child may one day choose to leave it.

A space in which words are not forced.

A space in which the child is taken seriously without the adults anticipating the story.

A space in which silence is not interpreted as guilt or resistance, but encountered as an experience still seeking its form.

And a space in which the adult is willing to remain long enough for the child to discover that even what is not said can be met with care.