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THE LANGUAGE OF MENTAL HEALTH

Children and Mental

Health Talk
Perspectives on
Social Competence
Edited by
Joyce Lamerichs · Susan J. Danby
Amanda Bateman · Stuart Ekberg
The Language of Mental Health

Series Editors
Michelle O’Reilly
The Greenwood Institute
University of Leicester
Leicester, UK

Jessica Nina Lester

School of Education
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN, USA
This series brings together rich theoretical and empirical discussion at
the intersection of mental health and discourse/conversation analysis.
Situated broadly within a social constructionist perspective, the books
included within this series will offer theoretical and empirical examples
highlighting the discursive practices that surround mental health and
make ‘real’ mental health constructs. Drawing upon a variety of dis-
course and conversation analysis perspectives, as well as data sources, the
books will allow scholars and practitioners alike to better understand
the role of language in the making of mental health.

Editorial Board
We are very grateful to our expert editorial board who continue to pro-
vide support for the book series. We are especially appreciative of the
feedback that they have provided on earlier drafts of this book. Their
supportive comments and ideas to improve the book have been very
helpful in our development of the text. They continue to provide sup-
port as we continue to edit the book series ‘the language of mental
health’. We acknowledge them here in alphabetical order by surname.
Tim Auburn, Plymouth University, UK
Galina Bolden, Rutgers University, USA
Susan Danby, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Debra Friedman, Indiana University, USA
Ian Hutchby, University of Leicester, UK
Doug Maynard, University of Wisconsin, USA
Emily A. Nusbaum, University of San Francisco, USA

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15193
 Joyce Lamerichs · Susan J. Danby ·
Amanda Bateman · Stuart Ekberg
Editors

Children and Mental

Health Talk
Perspectives on Social Competence
Editors
Joyce Lamerichs Susan J. Danby
Department of Language, Literature School of Early Childhood and Inclusive
and Communication Education
VU University Amsterdam Queensland University of Technology
Amsterdam, Noord-Holland Brisbane, QLD, Australia
The Netherlands
Stuart Ekberg
Amanda Bateman School of Psychology and Counselling
Swansea University Queensland University of Technology
Swansea, UK Brisbane, QLD, Australia

The Language of Mental Health

ISBN 978-3-030-28425-1 ISBN 978-3-030-28426-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28426-8

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2019
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse
of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by
similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt
from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the
authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained
herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with
regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Elena Ray/Alamy Stock Photo

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Preface

This collection has arisen out of many years of shared research inter-
ests in exploring how children’s social competence plays out in differ-
ent institutional settings. We each have been involved in undertaking
research in which a child’s well-being and mental health constitute a
focus of those investigations. Broadly within the contributions of this
book, the authors present detailed analysis of naturally occurring social
encounters based on interactions that involve children in a range of
clinical, non-clinical and research settings. The focus of this book marks
a watershed moment in that we attend to both the research component
of understanding children’s interactional competence in situ and also
the role of the professional through their reflections.
This book grew out of seminars, activities and professional devel-
opment programs for researchers and professionals to reflect together
on research and professional insights. A seminar held at Queensland
University of Technology in October 2016 titled ‘Who is the expert
here?’ (led by Susan Danby and Stuart Ekberg) brought together
researchers and professionals to share and reflect upon the research under-
taken within a range of health and educational settings. The researchers
discussed how their collaborations with the practitioners enriched the

v
vi      Preface

research practices, and the professionals considered what this might mean
for their professional practices (e.g., see Houen, 2017). This approach
optimises the usefulness of bringing together researchers and profession-
als to share their thinking in ways that produce more explanatory power
than a single approach alone can do (McWilliam, 2012).
The power of these research-practice nexus conversations challenges
existing ways where research may be privileged over practice. The con-
versations of professional reflections are consistent with the ongoing rise
of ‘applied conversation analysis’ (Antaki, 2011). While Harvey Sacks’
early work (1992) with the suicide prevention centre may be consid-
ered an example of applied conversation analysis, more recent initi-
atives more formally connect research with practice and, importantly,
explicate the many lessons learned when working closely together with
organisations (Kitzinger, 2011). There are complexities and difficul-
ties, and possible discrepancies can exist between the language of pro-
fessionals and the language of researchers using ethnomethodological
and conversation analysis approaches (Peräkylä & Vehviläinen, 2003).
For researchers, it is important to learn and engage with the language of
professionals, to be able to communicate the findings from conversation
analyses in ways that are recognisable and relevant to the organisation
(Kitzinger, 2011).
Perhaps the most well-known method in the field of Conversation
Analysis for using empirically based conversation analytic evidence to
understand communication within organisations is the Conversation
Analytic Role-play Method (CARM) (Stokoe, 2014). This approach
uses audio and video recordings of actual encounters and then over-
lays these with a framework to discuss and understand how practition-
ers go about their mundane everyday work activities. This approach is
a model of professional development that has produced new under-
standings to support practitioners and organisations to engage in effec-
tive communication practices. Building on CARM (Stokoe, 2014),
others have brought together researchers and professionals with the
aim to improve workplace communication. For instance, Church and
Bateman have designed a method to engage in practical work with
early childhood teachers (Church & Bateman, 2019). Known as the
Conversation Analysis in Early Childhood (CAiEC) approach, the
 Preface     vii

CAiEC workshops (https://www.caiecworkshops.com) are philosoph-

ically structured within an interactional competence framework where
teachers’ professional knowledge is valued, and research and practice
meet in collaborative and constructive ways to explore early childhood
teaching strategies. As with CARM, CAiEC workshops use video foot-
age of real-life practice as a discussion point with professionals around
how particular practices support children’s learning, stimulating reflec-
tion and informing both future practice and research. A similar focus on
interactional strategies also is central to the Discursive Action Method
(Lamerichs & te Molder, 2011), which has been used to invite adoles-
cents and social workers to reflect on particular instances of their own
talk and inspect the strategies they use. The method has since then
been developed further and is currently used to guide different group
of professionals to approach the communicative practices in which they
engage as dialogical conversations (Aarts & Te Molder, 2017; see also
https://www.centrumvoordialoog.nl).
What emerged from the interest in the researcher-professional con-
nection is a series of chapters within this book that have the potential to
reshape how we understand the nexus of research and professional prac-
tice. The aim of this book is to provide opportunities for complex con-
versations to emerge for researchers and professionals so that they can
come together to genuinely access complex ways of thinking and doing
around children’s interactional competence. Our shared agenda formed
a conceptual space where we realised that we needed to consider matters
of the research and practice nexus within the current international pol-
icy and research environments to attend to the relevance of this work
for organisations and to build sustainable relationships with stakehold-
ers and organisations beyond academia. This broad range of profes-
sional reflections offers distinct perspectives of professional engagement
with children. As such, their professional reflections bring a rich, holis-
tic view of professional practices that take place in a range of settings
addressed in this book.
The contributions of these chapters speak at a very practical level to
global initiatives to orient to the contributions that research can make to
fields outside of academia. Internationally, there is a new emphasis on the
significant contributions that research practices can make to organisations
viii      Preface

outside academia. Researchers engaging with policy-makers, practitioners

and professionals make possible the shared transfer of knowledge, meth-
ods and resources. For instance, the recently implemented national
Australian Research Engagement and Impact Assessment was an initiative
designed to reorient academic research agendas and practices to drive the
work of businesses and to improve social and economic outcomes (Gunn
& Mintrom, 2018). Within the New Zealand context, government initi-
atives such as the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI) offer
funding to support collaborative research between teachers and univer-
sity researchers (http://www.tlri.org.nz). The TLRI incentive emphasises
the importance of strong partnerships between teachers and researchers
when applying for funding to ensure that teachers are recognised as pro-
fessionals who competently identify areas of their professional practice
that can be supported by research evidence. Within the Dutch context,
the National Science Agenda 2019–2024 by the Ministry of Education,
Culture and Science announced a focal area of research on children and
youth (The Netherlands Initiative for Education Research (NRO), 2018).
The research agenda identifies several subdomains (e.g., health care,
education, psychosocial development and upbringing) in which trans-
disciplinary collaborations across professional organisations, scientists
and policy-makers are proposed. These examples of policy initiatives are
located within a national agenda.
Our intention as editors began with a different agenda. We set out
to bring researcher-professional conversations closer to the everyday
lives of researchers and professionals by focusing on local instances of
engagement. Wishing to avoid the push and pull of national policy
endeavours and associations with engagement and impact, we elected
to situate this book within the foundational principles of ethnometh-
odology and conversation analysis by focusing on local practices and
building capacity for re-shaping, at a very practical level, the kinds of
relationships and interactions that can occur between researchers and
professionals. What this means is that this book is intended to give gen-
uine access to the complex ways that researchers and professionals can
engage with each other, and to introduce potentially new converts to
the power of rich conversations among researchers and professionals.
 Preface     ix

The overall goal of this undertaking is to embrace better opportunities

to understand children and their interactional competence and, conse-
quentially, children’s contributions as key players in their everyday lives.

The Focus of This Book

The book examines the complex interplay of young children’s interac-
tional practices within a range of institutional settings. We take up the
challenge of building a collection of documented research and profes-
sional practices and reflections. Each chapter first presents empirical
research that investigates aspects of children’s interactional practices,
and this is followed by a section that is best described as a practice-led
reflection. These chapters contribute to an emerging body of work that
presents understandings of how children employ a range of interactional
competences as they interact in clinical and other health settings with
professionals whose role is to support the child’s mental health and
well-being. The chapters in this book take up the challenges of linking
practice-led reflections by having invited professionals to reflect upon
the research described in the first section of the chapter. Taken together,
they provide rich accounts of the nexus of research and practice.
In Children and Mental Health Talk: Perspectives on Social Competence,
the chapters are written by internationally known and respected
researchers within the fields of studies of children through the lenses of
ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, and many draw on the
sociology of childhood and ethnomethodological understandings of
social competence. An important feature of this book is that of profes-
sional reflections in response to the research reported in that chapter.
This approach reflects the intention of the editors to bring to the fore
the essential relationship that must exist for those who are researchers
and those who are professionals within the field being researched.
This book consists of eight chapters that are book-ended by a first
chapter that introduces the conceptual framing that underpins the
book’s philosophy and approach, and an epilogue (Chapter 8) that
draws together the significance of this work. The remaining six chapters
x      Preface

contribute to this book focus on ‘the social arenas of action’ (Hutchby &
Moran-Ellis, 1998) of child-professional encounters, which we have cat-
egorised across three arenas of action: clinical encounters, non-clinical
encounters and research encounters:

• Clinical encounters: O’Reilly, Kiyimba and Hutchby explore child

mental health assessments conducted in the UK, highlighting the
ways in which children display competence about their mental health
in a clinical setting. Kawashima and Maynard consider echolalia by
children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder within a devel-
opmental disability clinic in the USA. By showing how children can
use echolalia to accomplish particular social actions within clinical
encounters, Kawashima and Maynard highlight some of the limita-
tions of treating this phenomenon solely as a sign of mental health
pathology.
• Non-clinical encounters: Bateman and Danby examine ways chil-
dren discuss a potentially traumatic event in a non-clinical context.
Focusing on discussions that occur within a New Zealand preschool
about a recent earthquake, Bateman and Danby show how preschool
teachers and children collaboratively contribute to discussions about
their experiences of the earthquake, and routinely incorporated dis-
cussion of ways in which the local community was recovering from
that experience. Jol, Stommel and Spooren explore Dutch police
interrogations with children who have been the witness of a sexual
offence, highlighting child interviewees’ demonstrations of compe-
tence by reporting ways in which they misled offenders.
• Research encounters: Theobald and Danby consider mental w ­ ell-being
beyond a clinical context, by exploring a video-simulated research con-
versation in Australia. Through their analysis, Theobald and Danby
highlight the children’s competence when asked to discuss such poten-
tially sensitive matters. Lamerichs, Alisic and Schasfoort consider dis-
plays of social competence in Dutch psychological research interviews
about a traumatic event. Through their analysis of these encounters,
Lamerichs and her colleagues show ways in which children skilfully
resist attempts by the interviewing psychologist to pursue particular
topical agendas.
 Preface     xi

Proposed as a series of researcher-professional conversations, the edi-

tors of this book aimed to bring to the fore the usefulness of conversa-
tions in terms of transdisciplinary knowledge translation.

Brisbane, Australia Susan J. Danby

Brisbane, Australia Stuart Ekberg
Swansea, UK Amanda Bateman
Amsterdam, The Netherlands Joyce Lamerichs

References
Aarts, N., & Te Molder, H. (2017). Spreek, zwijg, lach, hoor, zie, vraag en
verwonder… Een inleiding in de dialoog. Wageningen, The Netherlands:
Centrum voor Dialoog.
Antaki, C. (Ed.). (2011). Applied conversation analysis: Intervention and change
in institutional talk. Basingstoke: Springer.
Church, A., & Bateman, A. (2019). Methodology and professional develop-
ment: Conversation Analytic Role-play Method (CARM) for early child-
hood education. Journal of Pragmatics, 143, 242–254.
Gunn, A., & Mintrom, M. (2018). Measuring research impact in Australia
Australian Universities’ Review, 60(1), 9–15.
Houen, S. (2017). Teacher talk: “I wonder… request designs” (Thesis by pub-
lication). Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.
Retrieved from https://eprints.qut.edu.au/108029/1/Sandra_Houen_Thesis.pdf.
Hutchby, I., & Moran-Ellis, J. (1998). Situating children’s social competence.
In I. Hutchby & J. Moran-Ellis (Eds.), Children and social competence:
Arenas of action (pp. 2–26). London: Falmer Press.
Kitzinger, C. (2011). Working with childbirth helplines: The contribu-
tions and limitations of conversation analysis. In C. Antaki (Ed.), Applied
Conversation Analysis (pp. 98–118). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lamerichs, J., & te Molder, H. (2011). Reflecting on your own talk: The
discursive action method at work. In C. Antaki (Ed.), Applied conversa-
tion analysis: Intervention and change in institutional talk (pp. 184–206).
Houndsmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
McWilliam, E. (2012). Foreword. In A. Lee & S. Danby (Eds.), Reshaping
doctoral education: International approaches and pedagogies (pp. xvii–xxii).
London: Routledge.
xii      Preface

Peräkylä, A., & Vehviläinen, S. (2003). Conversation analysis and the pro-
fessional stocks of interactional knowledge. Discourse & Society, 14(6),
727–750.
Stokoe, E. (2014). The Conversation Analytic Role-play Method (CARM):
A method for training communication skills as an alternative to simulated
role-play. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 47(3), 255–265.
The Netherlands Initiative for Education Research (NRO). (2018). Knowledge
agenda youth. Retrieved from The Netherlands Initiative for Education
Research (NRO), www.nro.nl/en/.
 Acknowledgements

We would like to extend our gratitude to several people who have sup-
ported us during the development of this edited volume. We want to
thank Michelle O’Reilly and Jessica Nina Lester, editors of the book
series The Language of Mental Health, for considering this edited volume
on Children and Mental health Talk as part of the series. We would also
like to acknowledge Palgrave for supporting us throughout this process,
particularly Joanna O’Neill for her help throughout.
This edited volume could not have been put together without the
professionals, families and children who were involved in the stud-
ies included in this book. We thank all contributing authors for the
time and energy they have put into writing up their work as well as all
reviewers who helped us to improve and develop the chapters and the
professional reflections prior to inclusion. Their participation has been
vital and so has been the encouragement and support we received from
of our partners, our families and our colleagues.

xiii
 A Note on the Transcription System

In accordance with the standard approach taken in Conversation

Analysis, the contributions to this volume report fragments of data that
have been transcribed according to transcription conventions developed
by Jefferson (2004), which record productional and distributional fea-
tures of vocal conduct that have been found to be procedurally relevant
to participants in interaction (Hepburn & Bolden, 2013). Sometimes,
additional conventions developed by Mondada (2018) have been used
to transcribe non-vocal embodied conduct. Readers who are not famil-
iar with these conventions may wish to consult the following transcrip-
tion key.
Temporal Dimensions
Wo[rd] Square brackets mark speaker overlap, with left
[Wo]rd square brackets indicating overlap onset and right
square brackets indicating overlap offset.
Word=word An equal sign indicates the absence of discernible
silence between two utterances or actions, which
can occur within a single person’s turn or between
the turns of two people.

xv
xvi      A Note on the Transcription System

Word (0.4) word A number within parentheses refers to silence, which

is measured to the nearest tenth of a second and can
occur either as a pause within a current speaker’s
turn or as a gap between two speakers’ turns.
Vocal Conduct
Word (.) word A period within parentheses indicates a micropause
of less than two-tenths of a second.
Word. A period indicates falling intonation at the end of a
unit of talk.
Word, A comma indicates slightly rising intonation.
Word¿ An inverted question mark indicates moderately ris-
ing intonation.
Word; Alternatively a semicolon also indicates moderately
rising intonation.
Word? A question mark indicates rising intonation.
Word_ An underscore following a word indicates level
intonation.
Word Underlining indicates emphasis being placed on the
underlined sounds.
Wo:::rd Colons indicate the stretching of the immediately
preceding sound, with multiple colons representing
prolonged stretching.
Wo::rd Underlining followed by one or more colons indi-
cates a shift in pitch during the pronunciation of a
sound, with rising pitch on the underlined compo-
nent followed by falling pitch on the colon compo-
nent that is not underlined.
Wo::rd An underlined colon indicates the converse of the
above, with rising pitch on the underlined colon
component.
↑Word↑ Upward arrows mark a sharp increased pitch shift,
which begins in the syllable following the arrow.
An utterance encased with upward arrows indicates
that the talk is produced at a higher pitch than sur-
rounding talk.
 A Note on the Transcription System     xvii

↓Word↓ Downward arrows mark a sharp decreased pitch

shift, which begins in the syllable following the
arrow. An utterance encased with downward arrows
indicates that the talk is produced at a lower pitch
than surrounding talk.
WORD Upper case indicates talk produced at a louder vol-
ume than surrounding utterances by the same
speaker.
°Word° Words encased in degree signs indicate utterances
produced at a lower volume than surrounding talk.
Double degree signs indicate utterances produced at
an every lower volume than surrounding talk.
>Word< Words encased with greater-than followed by less-
than symbols indicate talk produced at a faster pace
than surrounding talk.
<Word> Words encased with less-than followed by greater-
than symbols indicate talk produced at a slower
pace than surrounding talk.
Wor- A hyphen indicates an abrupt termination in the
pronunciation of the preceding sound.
£Word£ Pound signs encase utterances produced with smile
voice.
#Word# Hash signs encase utterances produced with creaky
voice.
~Word~ Tilde signs encase utterances produced with tremu-
lous voice.
hhh The letter ‘h’ indicates audible exhalation, with
more letters indicating longer exhalation.
.hhh A period followed by the letter ‘h’ indicates audible
inhalation.
→ Right arrows are used to highlight phenomena of
interest.
xviii      A Note on the Transcription System

((Description)) Words encased in double parentheses indicate

aspects of conduct for which there is no established
transcription convention. In many—but not all—
chapters of this book, this convention is employed
to transcribe embodied conduct. It is also used to
convey issues that come up for researchers working
with languages other than English.
Alternatively, the below conventions are used to
transcribe embodied conduct.
Embodied Conduct
%% Percentage signs indicate the beginning and end of
embodied actions of a particular participant.
** Asterisks are used to encase descriptions of embod-
ied actions of another participant.
%---> An arrow indicates an action continues across subse-
quent lines,
----->% Until a corresponding arrow is reached.

References
Hepburn, A., & Bolden, G. B. (2013). The conversation analytic approach to
transcription. In J. Sidnell & T. Stivers (Eds.), The handbook of conversation
analysis (pp. 57–76). Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Jefferson, G. (2004). Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In
G. H. Lerner (Ed.), Conversation analysis: Studies from the first generation
(pp. 13–31). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Mondada, L. (2018). Multiple temporalities of language and body in interac-
tion: Challenges for transcribing multimodality. Research on Language and
Social Interaction, 51(1), 85–106.
 Contents

1 Professional Practices and Children’s Social Competence

in Mental Health Talk 1
Joyce Lamerichs, Stuart Ekberg, Amanda Bateman
and Susan J. Danby

2 Testing Children’s Degrees and Domains of Social

Competence in Child Mental Health Assessments 17
Michelle O’Reilly, Nikki Kiyimba and Ian Hutchby

3 The Social Organization of Echolalia in Clinical

Encounters Involving a Child Diagnosed with Autism
Spectrum Disorder 49
Michie Kawashima and Douglas W. Maynard

4 Initiating Earthquake Talk with Young Children:

Children’s Social Competence and the Use of Resources 73
Amanda Bateman and Susan J. Danby

xix
xx      Contents

5 Misleading the Alleged Offender: Child Witnesses’

Displays of Competence in Police Interviews 105
Guusje Jol, Wyke Stommel and Wilbert Spooren

6 Children’s Competence and Wellbeing in Sensitive

Research: When Video-Stimulated Accounts
Lead to Dispute 137
Maryanne Theobald and Susan J. Danby

7 ‘Well I Had Nothing Weird Going On’: Children’s

Displays of Social Competence in Psychological
Research Interviews 167
Joyce Lamerichs, Eva Alisic and Marca Schasfoort

8 Children and Mental Health Talk: Perspectives

on Social Competence—An Epilogue 201
Karin Osvaldsson Cromdal and Jakob Cromdal

Index 209
 List of Professional Reflection Authors

Chapter 2 Nikki Kiyimba

Chapter 3 Tetsuya Abe
Chapter 4 Paula Robinson and Claire Lethaby
Chapter 5 Naomi Dessaur
Chapter 6 Gillian Busch
Chapter 7 Eva Alisic

xxi
 Notes on Contributors

Tetsuya Abe is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychosomatic

and General Internal Medicine at Kansai Medical University. Tetsuya
Abe graduated from Osaka City University of Medicine in Japan and
obtained his Doctor of Philosophy in Medicine at Kansai Medical
University. For over 20 years, his practice has focused on functional gas-
trointestinal disorders and chronic non-malignant pain. He also works
in the areas of conversation analysis, developmental disorders, medi-
cal interviews and medical education. He is a delegate of the Japanese
Society of Psychosomatic Medicine.
Eva Alisic is Associate Professor, Child Trauma and Recovery, at the
Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of
Melbourne, Australia. She conducts research into how children and
families cope with traumatic events such as disaster and violence, and
works with policy makers and clinicians to translate research findings
into practice.
Amanda Bateman began her career as an early childhood practi-
tioner in Wales, UK, before completing her Ph.D. and moving to New
Zealand to work as a Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Education at

xxiii
xxiv      Notes on Contributors

Waikato University. She is currently Senior Lecturer and Programme

Director of Early Childhood Studies at Swansea University, Wales. In
her research, Amanda Bateman uses ethnomethodology, conversa-
tion analysis and language socialisation theory to investigate the social
worlds of children. She has been Principal Investigator for funded and
non-funded research projects and is currently co-researcher on Royal
Marsden and Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI) funded
projects in New Zealand. Amanda Bateman has published widely
from her research, including the books Early Childhood Education: The
Co-Production of Knowledge and Relationships, and Children’s Knowledge-
in-Interaction: Studies in Conversation Analysis.
Gillian Busch is Senior Lecturer and Head of Program in early
childhood at Central Queensland University (CQU), Rockhampton,
Australia. Dr Busch uses ethnomethodology and conversation analy-
sis to study interactions in family and education settings. She obtained
her PhD from QUT with her thesis titled The Social Orders of Family
Mealtime being awarded the Early Childhood Australia Doctoral
Thesis Award in 2012. She is a co-editor of a book titled Constructing
Methodology for Qualitative Research: Researching Education and Social
Practices. She is involved in a number of research projects including
family SKYPE interactions and celebrations in early childhood settings.
Gillian is also an experienced early childhood teacher.
Jakob Cromdal is Professor of Educational Practice in the Department
of Social and Welfare Studies, Linköping University, Sweden. He spe-
cialises in postcognitive approaches to social interaction which includes
studies in ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, discursive psy-
chology and membership categorisation analysis. He has published on
a variety of topics related to young persons’ social conduct within a
variety of institutional settings such as classrooms, driving school cars,
detention homes, emergency services and youth helplines.
Susan J. Danby is Professor in School of Early Childhood Education
and Inclusive Education at Queensland University of Technology
(QUT), Brisbane, Australia. Her research explores the everyday social
and interactional practices of children, showing their complex and
 Notes on Contributors     xxv

competent work as they build their social worlds with family members,
peers and teachers within home and school contexts. She has published
in the areas of qualitative research, helpline interaction, home and class-
room interaction, early childhood pedagogy and doctoral education.
Naomi Dessaur is a Dutch social worker. She graduated from The
Hague University of Applied Sciences and has a degree in advanced
training as a coach, supervisor and trainer. After years of working with
children and families, she saw how adults struggle to discuss subjects
such as child abuse and sexuality with children. This ‘invisible suffer-
ing’ as she calls it was the trigger in 2008 to start with the Dessaur
Training Company. She now trains professionals how to handle child
abuse, domestic violence and sexual abuse and helps them to create a
safe child-centred environment in which children can talk openly. She
has also started an online platform to help parents/caregivers find ways
to talk with children about sexuality and related issues.
Stuart Ekberg is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Psychology
& Counselling at Queensland University of Technology. He specialises
in conversation analytic research, investigating social interaction across
a range of settings. His current research focuses on psychotherapeu-
tic interactions, paediatric palliative care consultations and mundane
conversations. His work on this book was supported by a Discovery
Early Career Researcher Award (Reference: DE170100026) from the
Australian Research Council.
Ian Hutchby is an independent researcher, formerly Professor of
Sociology at the University of Leicester, UK. His research uses conver-
sation analysis to investigate the situated social competence of children
interacting with adults in everyday and institutional settings such as
child counselling, family therapy and child mental health assessments.
Guusje Jol is a Ph.D. candidate at the Centre for Language Studies at
Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and a Lecturer at
the Open University. She has a background in both criminal law and
linguistics. Her research interests include (institutional) interaction and
language in a legal context.
xxvi      Notes on Contributors

Michie Kawashima is Associate Professor in the Department of

International Studies at Kyoto Sangyo University in Japan. She has
mainly worked on areas of conversation analysis and health communi-
cation. She has published widely on interpersonal interaction in wom-
en’s health, palliative care, childcare and emergency medicine. Recent
work has investigated how very bad news is delivered in a Japanese
Emergency Room and interactional (‘Mitori’) practices in processes of
death and dying at a Japanese Hospital.
Nikki Kiyimba is a Senior Educator and Programme Leader for the
Masters in Professional Practice at Bethlehem Tertiary Institute, New
Zealand. She also is a Chartered Clinical Psychologist, originally work-
ing in the UK specialising in working with clients experiencing complex
trauma and enduring psychological difficulties, and now working with
clients via Tele Health in New Zealand.
Joyce Lamerichs is Assistant Professor and an experienced researcher in
the Faculty of Humanities at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, The
Netherlands. Her research interests centre around institutional interac-
tions in the domain of health. She has published in the areas of child
and adult mental health, and combines insights from conversation anal-
ysis and discursive psychology to study both online and face-to-face
encounters in health and medical settings. Her current research investi-
gates end-of-life talk in Dutch University Medical Centres.
Claire Lethaby is the Assistant Centre Manager at New Brighton
Community Preschool and Nursery. She has worked in this centre since
2002, as kaiako in both the preschool and infant and toddler areas. She
is passionate about respectful practices and tamariki experiencing equal-
ity. Claire Lethaby has two sons, Quinn and Cullen, who have both
joined her at the centre for their preschool years. In her spare time, she
loves reading, crafting and crosswording as well as spending time with
her family. Caravaning and camping is an important part of their family
culture and they try to get away in their 1978 caravan called Jenny as
much as possible, seeing the sights of beautiful Aotearoa.
Douglas W. Maynard is Conway-Bascom Professor, and Harold and
Arlene Garfinkel Faculty Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the
 Notes on Contributors     xxvii

University of Wisconsin–Madison. His current work includes co-edit-

ing (with John Heritage) a volume on Harold Garfinkel: Praxis, Social
Order, and Ethnomethodology’s Legacies (forthcoming with Oxford
University Press), and a monograph co-authored with Jason Turowetz
on the testing and diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (forthcoming
with University of Chicago Press). At UW, he teaches undergraduate
and graduate courses on ethnomethodology, on conversation analy-
sis and on social psychology. He is the immediate past president of the
International Society for Conversation Analysis.
Michelle O’Reilly is an Associate Professor of Communication
in Mental Health at the University of Leicester, working for the
Greenwood Institute of Child Health. Her joint activities between the
university and Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust centre on quali-
tative research in child mental health, with a focus on family therapy
interactions and child mental health assessments.
Karin Osvaldsson Cromdal is a licensed psychologist with clinical
experience from the Children and Youth Mental Health Services. She
is Associate Professor of Child Studies in the Division of Social Work,
Linköping University, Sweden. Osvaldsson Cromdal received her Ph.D.
in Child Studies from Linköping University in 2002. Working within
the main framework of ethnomethodology and discursive psychology,
Osvaldsson is engaged in research on identity and social interaction in
various settings, including detention homes for troubled youth, emer-
gency rescue services and Internet and telephone counselling organisa-
tions. She is currently engaged in research projects on online social work
counselling and child helpline organisations.
Paula Robinson is the Manager of New Brighton Community
Preschool and Nursery and has been a member of this centre for over
20 years. Paula is passionate about this community and aims to make
this centre a place where everyone feels this is their place. Paula’s son
Baxter attended the centre and now is at Intermediate School. He still
loves coming into the centre now, acting as one of the team. Outside
of work, Paula enjoys spending time cooking, doing crafts, watching
Baxter’s sports and having fun with her family. She loves the adventures
xxviii      Notes on Contributors

that the countryside and weather offer, a sense her son also enjoys and
her partner endures.
Marca Schasfoort is a University Teacher in the Department of
Language, Literature and Communication at the Faculty of Humanities
(Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands). Marca Schasfoort has
co-authored papers on institutional interaction and interactional anal-
yses of psychological interviews with children who have experienced
trauma. She teaches (applied) conversation analysis in the bachelor
programme on communication and information studies. She is also an
experienced trainer.
Wilbert Spooren is a Professor of Discourse Studies of Dutch
(Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen, The
Netherlands). His research interests are discourse and interaction anal-
ysis (with a particular focus on connectives and coherence relations in
different genres), language use and effective communication, language
use and new media, automatic analysis of coherence in text and talk,
text structure and text quality and subjectivity in discourse.
Wyke Stommel is an Assistant Professor of Language and
Communication in the Centre for Language Studies at Radboud
University Nijmegen in The Netherlands. Her interests include interac-
tion in institutional settings like counselling, the medical domain and
the police.
Maryanne Theobald is Senior Lecturer in the School of Early
Childhood and Inclusive Education at Queensland University of
Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia. She has 20 years experience
as an early childhood teacher. Her research focuses on communication
practices and social interaction of children’s participation, friendships,
disputes, celebrations and peer cultures in classrooms, playgrounds, in
multilingual and therapeutic settings. She has expertise in qualitative
approaches including ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, and
in transdisciplinary research with practitioner-researchers.
 1
Professional Practices and Children’s Social
Competence in Mental Health Talk
Joyce Lamerichs, Stuart Ekberg, Amanda Bateman
and Susan J. Danby

The World Health Organisation estimates that worldwide 10–20% of chil-

dren and adolescents experience mental health problems (WHO, 2018).
Beyond the boundaries of these clinically defined populations and condi-
tions, children experience a range of ordinary and extraordinary circum-
stances that affect their mental health and wellbeing. Throughout their

J. Lamerichs (B)
Department of Language, Literature and Communication, VU University
Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, The Netherlands
e-mail: [email protected]
S. Ekberg
School of Psychology and Counselling,
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]
A. Bateman
Swansea University, Swansea, UK
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2019 1

J. Lamerichs et al. (eds.), Children and Mental Health Talk,
The Language of Mental Health,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28426-8_1
2 J. Lamerichs et al.

lives, children may participate in a range of different institutional set-

tings where emotional, behavioural and neurodevelopmental matters are
attended to as relevant for the purposes of that institution. This might
occur in clinical settings where mental health and wellbeing comprise a
primary institutional focus. Beyond such institutions, the mental health
and wellbeing of children also are of relevance in a range of other institu-
tional settings, such as in educational or judicial systems or in the course
of research. Studies in these different contexts show the differing under-
standings of children’s interactions and a range of practices from those
professionals who support children to manage their health and wellbeing.
Rather than considering mental health and wellbeing issues as external
forces that happen to the child, the perspective here taken is that children
are directly involved in the process of talk around mental health issues
in everyday contexts, positioning them as interactionally competent and
capable. The undertaking of fine-grained analyses using ethnomethod-
ological and conversation analysis approaches makes it possible to observe
of the multifaceted ways that children manage and display social compe-
tence in a range of institutional settings.

From a Developmental to an Interactional

Perspective on Children’s Social Competence
The concept of children’s competence often is framed as an assessment
of children’s capability. Claims of children as competent—or not—are
driven by underlying paradigms that provide conceptual constructions
of the child as developing competence, prominent in many sociological
and psychological studies. As you read the chapters of this book, you
will see that the theoretical framing of children’s interactional competence
is located and described as in situ competence. In this understanding,

S. J. Danby
School of Early Childhood and Inclusive Education,
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
e-mail: [email protected]
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
made them work too long. His face brightened ever so little, as though the
sun had found a way to him. But suddenly that wooden look, the only safe
and perfect look, came back to his features. One could have sworn that fear
had never touched him, so expressionless, so still was he!
 FASHION

VI

Fashion
I have watched you this ten minutes, while your carriage has been standing
still, and have seen your smiling face change twice, as though you were
about to say; “I am not accustomed to be stopped like this”; but what I have
chiefly noticed is that you have not looked at anything except the persons
sitting opposite and the backs of your flunkeys on the box. Clearly nothing
has distracted you from following your thought: “There is pleasure before
me, I am told!” Yours is the three-hundredth carriage in this row that blocks
the road for half a mile. In the two hundred and ninety-nine that come
before it, and the four hundred that come after, you are sitting too—with
your face before you, and your unseeing eyes.
Resented while you gathered being; brought into the world with the most
distinguished skill; remembered by your mother when the whim came to
her; taught to believe that life consists in caring for your clean, well-
nourished body, and your manner that nothing usual can disturb; taught to
regard Society as the little ring of men and women that you see, and to feel
your only business is to know the next thing that you want and get it given
you—You have never had a chance!
You take commands from no other creature; your heart gives you your
commands, forms your desires, your wishes, your opinions, and passes
them between your lips. From your heart well-up the springs that feed the
river of your conduct; but your heart is a stagnant pool that has never seen
the sun. Each year when April comes, and the earth smells new, you have
an odd aching underneath your corsets. What is it for? You have a husband,
or a lover, or both, or neither, whichever suits you best; you have children,
or could have them if you wished for them; you are fed at stated intervals
with food and wine; you have all you want of country life and country
sports; you have the theatre and the opera, books, music, and religion! From
the top of the plume, torn from a dying bird, or the flowers, made at an
insufficient wage, that decorate your head, to the sole of the shoe that
cramps your foot, you are decked out with solemn care; a year of labour has
been sewn into your garments and forged into your rings—you are a
breathing triumph!
You live in the centre of the centre of the world; if you wish you can
have access to everything that has been thought since the world of thought
began; if you wish you can see everything that has ever been produced, for
you can travel where you like; you are within reach of Nature’s grandest
forms and the most perfect works of art. You can hear the last word that is
said on everything, if you wish. When you do wish, the latest tastes are
servants of your palate, the latest scents attend your nose—You have never
had a chance!
For, sitting there in your seven hundred carriages, you are blind—in
heart, and soul, and voice, and walk; the blindest creature in the world.
Never for one minute of your life have you thought, or done, or spoken for
yourself. You have been prevented; and so wonderful is this plot to keep
you blind that you have not a notion it exists. To yourself your sight seems
good, such is your pleasant thought. Since you cannot even see this hedge
around you, how can there be anything the other side? The ache beneath
your corsets in the spring is all you are ever to know of what there is
beyond. And no one is to blame for this—you least of all.
It was settled, long before the well-fed dullard’s kiss from which you
sprang. Forces have worked, in dim, inexorable progress, from the remotest
time till they have bred you, little blind creature, to be the masterpiece of
their creation. With the wondrous subtlety of Fate’s selection, they have
paired and paired all that most narrowly approaches to the mean, all that by
nature shirks the risks of living, all that by essence clings to custom, till
they have secured a state of things which has assured your coming, in your
perfection of nonentity. They have planted you apart in your expensive
mould, and still they are at work—these gardeners never idle—pruning and
tying night and day to prevent your running wild. The Forces are proud of
you—their waxen, scentless flower!
The sun beats down, and still your carriage does not move; and this
delay is getting on your nerves. You cannot imagine what is blocking-up
your way! Do you ever imagine anything? If all those goodly coverings that
contain you could be taken off, what should we find within the last and
inmost shell—a little soul that has lost its power of speculation. A soul that
was born in you a bird and has become a creeping thing; wings gone, eyes
gone, groping, and clawing with its tentacles what is given it.
You stand up, speaking to your coachman! And you are charming,
standing there, to us who, like your footman, cannot see the label “Blind.”
The cut of your gown is perfect, the dressing of your hair the latest, the
trimming of your hat is later still; your trick of speech the very thing; you
droop your eyelids to the life; you have not too much powder; it is a lesson
in grace to see you hold your parasol. The doll of Nature! So, since you
were born; so, until you die! And, with his turned, clean-shaven face, your
footman seems to say: “Madam, how you have come to be it is not my
province to inquire. You are! I am myself dependent on you!” You are the
heroine of the farce, but no one smiles at you, for you are tragic, the most
tragic figure in the world. No fault of yours that ears and eyes and heart and
voice are atrophied so that you have no longer spirit of your own!
Fashion brought you forth, and she has seen to it that you are the image
of your mother, knowing that if she made you by a hair’s-breadth different,
you would see what she is like and judge her. You are Fashion, Fashion
herself, blind, fear-full Fashion! You do what you do because others do it;
think what you think because others think it; feel what you feel because
others feel it. You are the Figure without eyes.
And no one can reach you, no one can alter you, poor little bundle of
others’ thoughts; for there is nothing left to reach.
In your seven hundred carriages, you pass; and the road is bright with
you. Above that road, below it, and on either hand, are the million things
and beings that you cannot see; all that is organic in the world, all that is
living and creating, all that is striving to be free. You pass, glittering, on
your round, the sightless captive of your own triumph; and the eyes of the
hollow-chested work-girls on the pavement fix on you a thousand eager
looks, for you are strange to them. Many of their hearts are sore with envy;
they do not know that you are as dead as snow around a crater; they cannot
tell you for the nothing that you are—Fashion! The Figure without eyes!
 SPORT

VII

Sport
Often in the ride of some Scotch wood I used to stand, clutching my gun,
with eyes moving from right to left, from left to right. Every nerve and fibre
of my body would receive and answer to the slightest movements, the
smallest noises, the faintest scents. The acrid sweetness of the spruce-trees
in the mist, the bite of innumerable midges, the feel of the deep, wet, mossy
heather underfoot, the brown-grey twilight of the wood, the stillness—these
were poignant as they never will be again. And slowly, back of that
stillness, the noises of the beaters would begin. Gentle and regular, at first—
like the ending of a symphony rather than its birth—they would swell, then
drop and fade away completely. In that unexpected silence a squirrel
scurried out along a branch, sat a moment looking, and scurried back; or,
with its soft, blunt flight, an owl would fly across.
Then, with a shrill, far “Mar-r-rk!” the beaters’ chorus would rise again,
drowned for an instant by the crack of the keepers’ guns; louder and louder
it came, rhythmically, inexorably nearer. In the ride little shivers of wind
shook the drops of warm mist off the needles of the spruce, and a half-
veiled sun faintly warmed and coloured everything. Stealing through
heather and fern would come a rabbit, confiding in the space before him
and the ride where he was wont to sun himself. At a shot he flung his mortal
somersault, or disappeared into a burrow, reached too soon. To see him lie
there dead in the brown-grey twilight of the trees would give one a strange
pleasure—a feeling such as some casual love affair will give a man, the
pleasure of a primitive virility expressed—but to watch him disappear into
the earth would irritate, for he had got his death, and, dead within the earth,
he would not do one any sort of credit. Nor was it nice to think that he was
dying slowly, so one forbore to think.
 Sometimes we did not shoot at such small stuff, but waited for the
roedeer. These dun familiars of the wood were very shy, clinging to the
deepest thickets, treading with gentle steps, invisible as spirits, and ever
trying to break back. Now and then, leaping forward with hindquarters
higher than its shoulders, one of them would face the line of beaters, and
then would arise the strangest noises above the customary sounds and
tappings—cries of fierce resentment that such fine “game” should thus
escape the guns. When the creature crossed the line these cries swelled into
a long, continuous, excited shriek; and, as the yells died out in muttering, I
used to feel a hollow sense of disappointment.
When the beat was over they would collect the birds and beasts which
had fulfilled their destiny, and place them all together. Half hidden by the
bracken or deep heather the little bodies lay abandoned to the ground with
the wonderful strange limpness of dead things. We stood looking at them in
the misty air, acrid with the fragrance of the spruce-trees; and each of us
would feel a vague strange thirst, a longing to be again standing in the rides
with the cries of the beaters in our ears, and creatures coming closer, closer
to our guns.
Often in the police-courts I have sat, while they drove another kind of
“game.”
It would be quiet in there but for the whisperings and shufflings peculiar
to all courts of law. Through the high-placed windows a grey light fell
impartially, and in it everything looked hard and shabby. The air smelled of
old clothes, and now and then, when the women were brought in, of the
corpse of some sweet scent.
Through a door on the left-hand side they would drive these women, one
by one, often five or six, even a dozen, in one morning. Some of them
would come shuffling forward to the dock with their heads down; others
walked boldly; some looked as if they must faint; some were hard and
stoical as stone. They would be dressed in black, quite neatly; or in cheap,
rumpled finery; or in skimped, mud-stained garments. Their faces were of
every type—dark and short, with high cheek-bones; blowsy from drink;
long, worn, and raddled; one here and there like a wild fruit; and many
bestially insensible, devoid of any sort of beauty.
They stood, as in southern countries, one may see many mules or asses,
harnessed to too-heavy loads of wood or stone, stand, utterly unmoving,
with a mute submissive viciousness. Now and then a girl would turn half
round towards the public, her lips smiling defiantly, but her eyes never
resting for a moment, as though knowing well enough there was no place
where they could rest. The next to her would seem smitten with a sort of
deathlike shame, but there were not many of this kind, for they were those
whom the beaters had driven in for the first time. Sometimes they refused to
speak. As a rule they gave their answers in hard voices, their sullen eyes
lowered; then, having received the meed of justice, went shuffling or
flaunting out.
They were used to being driven, it was their common lot; a little piece of
sport growing more frequent with each year that intervened between their
present and that moment when some sportsman first caught sight of them
and started out to bring them down. From most of them that day was now
distant by many thousand miles of pavement, so far off that it was hard
work to remember it. What sport they had afforded since! Yet not one of all
their faces seemed to show that they saw the fun that lay in their being
driven in like this. They were perhaps still grateful, some of them, at the
bottom of their hearts for that first moment when they came shyly towards
the hunter, who stood holding his breath for fear they should not come;
unable from their natures to believe that it was not their business to attract
and afford them sport. But suddenly in a pair of greenish eyes and full lips
sharpened at their corners, behind the fading paint and powder on a face,
one could see the huntress—the soul as of a stealing cat, waiting to flesh its
claws in what it could, driven by some deep, insatiable instinct. This one
too had known sport; she had loved to spring and bring down the prey just
as we who brought her here had loved to hunt her. Nature had put sport into
her heart and into ours; and behind that bold or cringing face there seemed
to lurk this question: “I only did what you do—what nearly every man of
you has done a little, in your time. I only wanted a bit of sport, like you:
that’s human nature, isn’t it? Why do you bring me here, when you don’t
bring yourselves! Why do you allow me in certain bounds to give you sport,
and trap me outside those bounds like vermin? When I was beautiful—and I
was beautiful—it was you who begged of me! I gave until my looks were
gone. Now that my looks are gone, I have to beg you to come to me, or I
must starve; and when I beg, you bring me here. That’s funny isn’t it, d——
d funny! I’d laugh, if laughter earned my living; but I can’t afford to laugh,
my fellow-sportsmen—the more there are of you the better for me until I’m
done for!”
Silently we men would watch—as one may watch rats let out of a cage
to be pounced upon by a terrier—their frightened, restless eyes cowed by
coming death; their short, frantic rush, soon ended; their tossed, limp
bodies! On some of our faces was a jeering curiosity, as though we were
saying: “Ah! we thought that you would come to this.” A few faces—not
used to such a show—were darkened with a kind of pity. The most were
fixed and hard and dull, as of men looking at hurtful things they own and
cannot do without. But in all our unmoving eyes could be seen that
tightening of fibre, that tenseness, which is the mark of sport. The beaters
had well done their work; the game was driven to the gun!
It was but the finish of the hunt, the hunt that we had started, one or
other of us, some fine day, the sun shining and the blood hot, wishing no
harm to any one, but just a little sport.
 MONEY

VIII

Money
Every night between the hours of two and four he would wake, and lie
sleepless, and all his monetary ghosts would come and visit him. If, for
instance, he had just bought a house and paid for it, any doubt he had
conceived at any time about its antecedents or its future would suddenly
appear, squatting on the foot-rail of his bed, staring in his face. There it
would grow, until it seemed to fill the room; and terror would grip his heart.
The words: “I shall lose my money,” would leap to his lips; but in the dark
it seemed ridiculous to speak them. Presently beside that doubt more doubts
would squat. Doubts about his other houses, about his shares; misgivings as
to Water Boards; terrors over Yankee Rails. They took, fantastically, the
shape of owls, clinging in a line and swaying, while from their wide black
gaps of mouth would come the silent chorus: “Money, money, you’ll lose
all your money!” His heart would start thumping and fluttering; he would
turn his old white head, bury his whisker in the pillow, shut his eyes, and
con over such investments as he really could not lose. Then, beside his head
half-hidden in the pillow, there would come and perch the spectral bird of
some unlikely liability, such as a lawsuit that might drive him into
bankruptcy; while, on the other side, touching his silver hair, would squat
the yellow fowl of Socialism. Between these two he would lie unmoving,
save for that hammering of his heart, till at last would come a drowsiness,
and he would fall asleep....
At such times it was always of his money and his children’s and
grandchildren’s money that he thought. It was useless to tell himself how
few his own wants were, or that it might be better for his children to have to
make their way. Such thoughts gave him no relief. His fears went deeper
than mere facts; they were religious, as it were, and founded in an
innermost belief that, by money only, Nature could be held at bay.
 Of this, from the moment when he first made money, his senses had
informed him, and slowly, surely, gone on doing so, till his very being was
soaked through with the conviction. He might be told on Sundays that
money was not everything, but he knew better. Seated in the left-hand aisle,
he seemed lost in reverence—a grandchild on either hand, his old knees in
quiet trousers, crossed, his white-fringed face a little turned towards the
preacher, one neat-gloved hand reposing on his thigh, the other keeping
warm a tiny hand thrust into it. But his old brain was far away, busy
amongst the Tables of Commandment, telling him how much to spend to
get his five per cent. and money back; his old heart was busy with the little
hand tucked into his. There was nothing in such sermons, therefore, that
could quarrel with his own religion, for he did not hear them; and even had
he heard them, they would not have quarrelled, his own creed of money
being but the natural modern form of a religion that his fathers had
interpreted as the laying-up of treasure in the life to come. He was only able
nowadays to say that he believed in any life to come, so that his
commercialism had been forced to find another outlet, and advance a step,
in accordance with the march of knowledge.
His religious feeling about money did not make him selfish, or niggardly
in any way—it merely urged him to preserve himself—not to take risks that
he could reasonably avoid, either in his mode of life, his work, or in the
propagation of his children. He had not married until he had a position to
offer to the latter, sufficiently secure from changes and chances in this
mortal life, and even then he had not been too precipitate, confining the
number to three boys, and one welcome girl, in accordance with the
increase of his income. In the circles where he moved, his course of action
was so normal that no one had observed the mathematical connection
between increasing income and the production and education of his family.
Still less had any one remarked the deep and silent process by which there
passed from him to them the simple elements of faith.
His children, subtly, and under cover of the manner of a generation
which did not mention money in so many words, had sucked in their
father’s firm religious instinct, his quiet knowledge of the value of the
individual life, his steady and unconscious worship of the means of keeping
it alive. Calmly they had sucked it in, and a thing or two besides. So long as
he was there they knew they could afford to make a little free with what
must come to them by virtue of his creed. When quite small children, they
had listened, rather bored, to his simple statements about money and the
things it bought; presently that instinct—shared by the very young with
dogs and other animals—for having of the best and consorting with their
betters, had helped them to see the real sense of what he said. As time went
on, they found gentility insisting more and more that this instinct should be
concealed; and they began unconsciously to perfect their father’s creed,
draping its formal tenets in the undress of an apparent disregard. For the
dogma, “Not worth the money!” they would use the words, “Not good
enough!” The teaching, “Business first,” they formulated, “Not more
pleasure than your income can afford, your health can stand, or your
reputation can assimilate.” There was money waiting for them, and they did
not feel it necessary to undertake even those “safe” risks which their father
had been obliged to take, to make that money. But they were quite to be
depended on. In the choosing of their friends, their sports, their clubs, and
occupations, a religious feeling guided them. They knew precisely just how
much their income was, and took care neither to spend more nor less. And
so devoutly did they act up to their principles, that, whether in the restaurant
or country house, whether in the saleroom of a curio shop, whether in their
regiments or their offices, they could always feel the presence of the
godhead blessing their discreet and comfortable worship. In one respect,
indeed, they were more religious than their father, who still preserved the
habit of falling on his knees at night, to name with Tibetan regularity a
strange god; they did not speak to him about this habit, but they wished he
would not do it, being fond of their old father, who continued them into the
past. They had gently laughed him out of talking about money, they had
gently laughed at him for thinking of it still; but they loved him, and it
worried them in secret that he should do this thing, which seemed to them
dishonest.
With their wives and husband—in course of time they had all married—
they very often came to see him, bringing their children. To the old man
these little visitors were worth more than all hydropathy; to help in playing
with the toys that he himself had given them, to stroke his grandsons’
yellow heads, and ride them on his knee; to press his silver whiskers to their
ruddy cheeks, pinching their little legs to feel how much there was of them,
and loving them the more, the more there was to love—this made his heart
feel warm. The dearest moments, he knew now, the consolation of his age,
were those he spent reflecting how—of the young things he loved, who
seemed to love him too a little—not one would have secured to him or her
less than twelve or thirteen hundred pounds a year; more, if he could
manage to hold on a little longer. For fifty years at least the flesh and blood
he left behind would be secure. His eye and mind, quick to notice things
like that, had soon perceived the difference of the younger generation’s
standards from his own; his children had perhaps a deeper veneration for
the means of living while they were alive, but certainly less faith in keeping
up their incomes after they were in their graves. And so, unconsciously, his
speculation passed them by, and travelled to his grandchildren, telling itself
that these small creatures who nestled up against him, and sometimes took
him walks, would, when they came to be grown men and women, have his
simpler faith, and save the money that he left them, for their own
grandchildren. Thus, and thus only, would he live, not fifty years, but a
hundred, after he was dead. But he was rendered very anxious by the law,
which refused to let him tie his money up in perpetuity.
Firm in his determination to secure himself against the future, he
opposed this strenuous piety to those temptations which beset the
individual, refusing numberless appeals, often much against his instincts of
compassion; opposing with his vote and all his influence movements to
increase the rates or income-tax for such purposes as the raising of funds to
enable aged people without means to die more slowly. He himself, who laid
up yearly more and more for the greater safety of his family, felt, no doubt
—though cynicism shocked him—that these old persons were only an
encumbrance to their families, and should be urged to dwindle gently out.
In such private cases as he came across, feeling how hard it was, he prayed
for strength to keep his hand out of his pocket, and strength was often given
him. So with many other invitations to depart from virtue. He fixed a
certain sum a year—a hundred pounds—with half-a-crown in the velvet bag
on Sundays—to be offered as libations to all strange gods, so that they
might leave him undisturbed to worship the true god of money. This was
effectual; the strange gods, finding him a man of strong religious principle,
yet no crank—his name appeared in twenty charitable lists, five pounds
apiece—soon let him be, for fear of wasting postage stamps and the under
parts of boots.
After his wife’s death, which came about when he was seventy, he
continued to reside alone in the house that he had lived in since his
marriage, though it was now too large for him. Every autumn he resolved to
make a change next spring; but when spring came, he could not bring
himself to tear his old roots up, and put it off till the spring following, with
the hope, perhaps, that he might then feel more inclined.
All through the years that he was living there alone, he suffered more
and more from those nightly visitations, of monetary doubts. They seemed,
indeed, to grow more concrete and insistent with every thousand pounds he
put between himself and their reality. They became more owl-like, more
numerous, with each fresh investment; they stayed longer at a time. And he
grew thinner, frailer, every year; pouches came beneath his eyes.
When he was eighty, his daughter, with her husband and children, came
to live with him. This seemed to give him a fresh lease of life. He never
missed, if he could help it, a visit to the nursery at five o’clock. There,
surrounded by toy bricks, he would remain an hour or more, building—
banks or houses, ships or churches, sometimes police-stations, sometimes
cemeteries, but generally banks. And when the edifice approached
completion, in the glory of its long white bricks, he waited with a sort of
secret ecstasy to feel a small warm body climb his back, and hear a small
voice say in his ear: “What shall we put in the bank to-day, Granddy?”
The first time this was asked, he had hesitated long before he answered.
During the thirty years that had elapsed since he built banks for his own
children, he had learned that one did not talk of money now, especially
before the young. One used a euphemism for it. The proper euphemism had
been slow to spring into his mind, but it had sprung at last; and they had
placed it in the bank. It was a very little china dog. They placed it in the
entrance hall.
The small voice said: “What is it guarding?”
He had answered: “The bank, my darling.”
The small voice murmured: “But nobody could steal the bank.”
Looking at the little euphemism, he had frowned. It lacked completeness
as a symbol. For a moment he had a wild desire to put a sixpence down, and
end the matter. Two small knees wriggled against his back, arms tightened
round his neck, a chin rubbed itself impatiently against his whisker. He
muttered hastily:
“But they could steal the papers.”
“What papers?”
 “The wills, and deeds, and—and cheques.”
“Where are they?”
“In the bank.”
“I don’t see them.”
“They’re in a cupboard.”
“What are they for?”
“For—for grown-up people.”
“Are they to play with?”
“NO!”
“Why is he guarding them?”
“So that—so that everybody can always have enough to eat.”
“Everybody?”
“Everybody.”
“Me, too?”
“Yes, my darling; you, of course.”
Locked in each other’s arms they looked down sidelong at the little
euphemism. The small voice said:
“Now that he’s there, they’re safe, aren’t they?”
“Quite safe.”
He had given up attending to his business, but almost every morning, at
nearly the same hour, he would walk down to his club, not looking very
much at things about the streets, partly because his thoughts were otherwise
engaged, partly because he had found it from the first a deleterious habit,
tending to the overcultivation of the social instincts. Arriving, he would
take the Times and the Financial News, and go to his pet armchair; here he
would stay till lunch-time, reading all that bore in any way on his affairs,
and taking a grave view of every situation. But at lunch a longing to express
himself would come, and he would tell his neighbours tales of his little
grandsons, of the extraordinary things they did, and of the future he was
laying up for them. In the pleasant warmth of mid-day, over his light but
satisfying lunch, surrounded by familiar faces, he would recount these tales
in cheerful tones, and his old grey eyes would twinkle; between him and his
struggle with those nightly apparitions, there were many hours of daylight,
there was his visit to the nursery. But, suddenly, looking up fixedly with
strained eyes, he would put a question such as this: “Do you ever wake up
in the night?” If the answer were affirmative, he would say: “Do you ever
find things worry you then out of—out of all proportion?” And, if they did,
he would clearly be relieved to hear it. On one occasion, when he had
elicited an emphatic statement of the discomfort of such waking hours, he
blurted out: “You don’t ever see a lot of great owls sitting on your bed, I
suppose?” Then, seemingly ashamed of what he had just asked, he rose, and
left his lunch unfinished.
His fellow-members, though nearly all much younger than himself, had
no unkindly feeling for him. He seemed to them, perhaps, to overrate their
interest in his grandsons and the state of his investments; but they knew he
could not help preoccupation with these subjects; and when he left them,
usually at three o’clock, saying almost tremulously: “I must be off; my
grandsons will be looking out for me!” they would exchange looks as
though remarking: “The old chap thinks of nothing but his grandchildren.”
And they would sit down to “bridge,” taking care to play within the means
their fathers had endowed them with.
But the “old chap” would step into a hansom, and his spirit, looking
through his eyes beneath the brim of his tall hat, would travel home before
him. Yet, for all his hurry, he would find the time to stop and buy a toy or
something on the way.
One morning, at the end of a cold March, they found him dead in bed,
propped on his pillows, with his eyes wide open. Doctors, hastily called in,
decided that he had died from failure of heart action, and fixed the hour of
death at anything from two to four; by the appearance of his staring pupils
they judged that something must have frightened him. No one had heard a
noise, no one could find a sign of anything alarming; so no one could
explain why he, who seemed so well preserved, should thus have suddenly
collapsed. To his own family he had never told the fact, that every night he
woke between the hours of two and four, to meet a row of owls squatting on
the foot-rail of his bed—he was, no doubt, ashamed of it. He had revealed
much of his religious feeling, but not the real depth of it; not the way his
deity of money had seized on his imagination; not his nightly struggles with
the terrors of his spirit, nor the hours of anguish spent, when vitality was
low, trying to escape the company of doubts. No one had heard the
fluttering of his heart, which, beginning many years ago, just as a sort of
pleasant habit to occupy his wakeful minutes in the dark, had grown to be
like the beating of a hammer on soft flesh. No one had guessed, he least of
all, the stroke of irony that Nature had prepared to avenge the desecration of
her law of balance. She had watched his worship from afar, and quietly
arranged that by his worship he should be destroyed; careless, indeed, what
god he served, knowing only that he served too much.
They brought the eldest of his little grandsons in. He stood a long time
looking, then asked if he might touch the cheek. Being permitted, he kissed
his little finger-tip and laid it on the old man’s whisker. When he was led
away and the door closed, he asked if “Granddy” were “quite safe”; and
twice again that evening he asked this question.
In the early light next morning, before the house was up, the under-
housemaid saw a white thing on the mat before the old man’s door. She
went, and stooping down, examined it. It was the little china dog.
 PROGRESS

IX

Progress
Motor cars were crossing the Downs to Goodwood Races. Slowly they
mounted, sending forth an oily reek, a jerky grinding sound; and a cloud of
dust hung over the white road. Since ten o’clock they had been mounting,
one by one, freighted with the pale conquerors of time and space. None
paused on the top of the green heights, but with a convulsive shaking
leaped, and glided swiftly down; and the tooting of their valves and the
whirring of their wheels spread on either hand along the hills.
But from the clump of beech-trees on the very top nothing of their
progress could be heard, and nothing seen; only a haze of dust trailing
behind them like a hurried ghost.
Amongst the smooth grey beech-stems of that grove were the pallid
forms of sheep, and it was cool and still as in a temple. Outside, the day was
bright, and a hundred yards away in the hot sun the shepherd, a bent old
man in an aged coat, was leaning on his stick. His brown face wrinkled like
a walnut, was fringed round with a stubble of grey beard. He stood very
still, and waited to be spoken to.
“A fine day?”
“Aye, fine enough; a little sun won’t do no harm. ’Twon’t last!”
“How can you tell that?”
“I been upon the Downs for sixty year!”
“You must have seen some changes?”
“Changes in men—an’ sheep!”
“An’ wages, too, I suppose. What were they when you were twenty?”
“Eight shillin’ a week.”
“But living was surely more expensive?”
 “So ’twas; the bread was mortial dear, I know, an’ the flour black! An’
piecrust, why, ’twas hard as wood!”
“And what are wages now?”
“There’s not a man about the Downs don’t get his sixteen shillin’; some
get a pound, some more.... There they go! Sha’n’t get ’em out now till tew
o’clock!” His sheep were slipping one by one into the grove of beech-trees
where, in the pale light, no flies tormented them. The shepherd’s little dark-
grey eyes seemed to rebuke his flock because they would not feed the
whole day long.
“It’s cool in there. Some say that sheep is silly. ’Tain’t so very much that
they don’t know.”
“So you think the times have changed?”
“Well! There’s a deal more money in the country.”
“And education?”
“Ah! Ejucation? They spend all day about it. Look at the railways too,
an’ telegraphs! See! That’s bound to make a difference.”
“So, things are better, on the whole?”
He smiled.
“I was married at twenty, on eight shillin’ a week; you won’t find them
doing such a thing as that these days—they want their comforts now.
There’s not the spirit of content about of forty or fifty years agone. All’s for
movin’ away an’ goin’ to the towns; an’ when they get there, from what
I’ve heard, they wish as they was back; but they don’t never come.”
There was no complaining in his voice; rather, a matter-of-fact and
slightly mocking tolerance.
“You’ll see none now that live their lives up on the Downs an’ never
want to change. The more they get the more they want. They smell the
money these millioneers is spendin’—seems to make ’em think they can do
just anythin’ ’s long as they get some of it themselves. Times past, a man
would do his job, an’ never think because his master was rich that he could
cheat him; he gave a value for his wages, to keep well with himself. Now, a
man thinks because he’s poor he ought to ha’ been rich, and goes about
complainin’, doin’ just as little as he can. It’s my belief they get their
notions from the daily papers—hear too much of all that’s goin’ on—it
onsettles them; they read about this Sawcialism, an’ these millioneers; it
makes a pudden’ in their heads. Look at the beer that’s drunk about it. For
one gallon that was drunk when I was young there’s twenty gallon now. The
very sheep ha’ changed since I remember; not one o’ them ewes you see
before you there, that isn’t pedigree—and the care that’s taken o’ them!
They’d have me think that men’s improvin’, too; richer they may be, but
what’s the use o’ riches if your wants are bigger than your purse? A man’s
riches is the things he does without an’ never misses.”
And crouching on his knee, he added:
“Ther’ goes the last o’ them; sha’n’t get ’em out now till tew o’clock.
One gone—all go!”
Then squatting down, as though responsibility were at an end, he leaned
one elbow on the grass, his eyes screwed up against the sun. And in his old
brown face, with its myriad wrinkles and square chin, there was a queer
contentment, as though approving the perversity of sheep.
“So riches don’t consist in man’s possessions, but in what he doesn’t
want? You are an enemy of progress?”
“These Downs don’t change—’tis only man that changes; what good’s
he doin’, that’s what I ask meself—he’s makin’ wants as fast as ever he
makes riches.”
“Surely a time must come when he will see that to be really rich his
supply must be in excess of his demand? When he sees that, he will go on
making riches, but control his wants.”
He paused to see if there were any meaning in such words, then
answered:
“On these Downs I been, man an’ boy, for sixty year.”
“And are you happy?”
He wrinkled up his brows and smiled.
“What age d’ you think I am? Seventy-six!”
“You look as if you’d live to be a hundred.”
“Can’t expect it! My health’s good though, ’cept for these.”
Like wind-bent boughs all the fingers of both his hands from the top
joint to the tip were warped towards the thumb.
“Looks funny! But I don’t feel ’em. What you don’t feel don’t trouble
you.”
 “What caused it?”
“Rheumatiz! I don’t make nothin’ of it. Where there’s doctors there’s
disease.”
“Then you think we make our ailments, too, as fast as we make
remedies?”
He slowly passed his gnarled hand over the short grass.
“My missus ’ad the doctor when she died.... See that dust? That’s
motorcars bringin’ folks to Goodwood Races. Wonderful quick-travellin’
things.”
“Ah! That was a fine invention, surely?”
“There’s some believes in them. But if they folk weren’t doin’
everything and goin’ everywhere at once, there’d be no need for them
rampagin’ motors.”
“Have you ever been in one yourself?”
His eyes began to twinkle mockingly.
“I’d like to get one here on a snowy winter’s day, when ye’ve to find
your way by sound and smell; there’s things up here they wouldn’t make so
free with. They say from London ye can get to anywhere. But there’s things
no man can ride away from. Downs ’ll be left when they’re all gone....
Never been off the Downs meself.”
“Don’t you ever feel you’d like to go?”
“There isn’t not hardly one as knows what these Downs are. I see the
young men growin’ up, but they won’t stay on ’em; I see folk comin’ down,
same as yourself, to look at ’em.”
“What are they, then—these Downs?”
His little eyes, that saw so vastly better than my eyes, deepened in his
walnut-coloured face. Fixed on those grey-green Downs, that reigned
serene above the country spread below in all its little fields, and woods, and
villages, they answered for him. It was long before he spoke.
“Healthiest spot in England!... Talkin’ you was of progress; but look at
bacon—four times the price now that ever it was when I were young. And
families—thirteen we had, my missus and meself; nowadays if they have
three or four it’s as much as ever they’ll put up with. The country’s
changed.”
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