This introductory chapter outlines how children are active agents with motives and intentions, and what practitioners can do to support children’s learning, development and well-being in different age periods. It is therefore relevant for adults who work with children from birth to late adolescence, both within and beyond formal institutions. We also intend it to be useful to researchers and other professionals concerned with children and young people.

Our aim is to look forward toward children’s futures and how they can be supported to benefit from and contribute to what society has to offer. We argue that, by taking children’s intentions and emotions seriously, we can create an education that benefits children across the age periods. When children move through the institutional practices that society creates for them, they will learn, acquire new motives and develop. Therefore, the tools that we offer will allow carers and practitioners to tailor their support to children in different age periods. These ideas underpin a caring relational form of pedagogy, which is particularly but not only, important when children are dealing with changes in society’s expectations for them. These changes occur as they move, for example, between family, day-care or school, and when new challenges arise in familiar situations.