Counselling methodology. Strategies that favour the acquisition or the change of habits in the patients and their parents

Abstract Communication techniques help health professionals to establish gratifying clinical relations with the patients and their families. Health care relation has, in itself, an educative value; a quality relation makes a better adherence to our recommendations. The capacity to find and understand why a specific patient and family come to us looking for help and advice and to agree with them what can be done, demands communication abilities. The way and stile we communicate with the children and adolescents and their families is fundamental to the process of establishing and changing habits. Listening reflexively, showing our approval, obtaining and strengthening selectively their own ?statements of automotivation? are the features and the origin of the efficacy of motivational interview (MI). How can we paediatricians, who work giving advice and recommendations, promote motivation in children and parents for change? People change in very different ways and for very different reasons. The MI is an approximation bound to help patients to acquire a compromise and to reach the will of change. An interpersonal relation centred in the patient, with the paediatrician showing an appropriate empathy, not possessive warmth and authenticity provides the ideal atmosphere.