Constructing familyness: Pedagogical conversations between professional parents and adolescents

•familyness is a pre-condition for open conversations between foster parent and adolescents;•conversations between parents and adolescents in specialized foster care are mostly parental reconstructions of adolescents' topic initiations;•verbal dominance in foster parent-adolescent communication can lead to an active position of adolescents if the content of the conversation is highly relevant and positive for the adolescent;•foster parent stimulate adolescents' conversational participation by asking for their views in a family-like atmosphere characterized by jokes and provocative remarks.

This study analyzes conversation between professional ‘parents’ and of out-of-home placed adolescents in specialized foster care. Videotaped and transcribed interactions of six family treatment homes were analyzed by interactional analysis. The topics of all conversations were initiated by the adolescents and reconstructed by the parents into pedagogical moments.When parents dominated the conversation, the positive content of their contributions resulted in an active position of the adolescent. In dinner table discussions, parents tried to elicit the adolescents' perspectives, while, by joking and provoking, creating an atmosphere of familyness. The adolescents seemed familiar with talking about their perspectives, views, and future plans.