Human becoming theory with children

As a nurse practitioner, I am often challenged with providing care for children in the traditional medical model. Struggling with these challenges has created new ways of being with patients and their families. Working with children is gratifying, stimulating, and life changing. Living true presence with children as they draw images of their realities gives rise to a powerful interconnectedness that facilitates greater understanding of their meaning about what is important to them as they create new ways of seeing health opportunities. Bearing witness to children as they use art and words to describe their feelings encourages and fosters new ways of becoming for the nurse and the child and the child's family. This column describes a dialogical-engagement of this nurse practitioner and a young child and how this process transformed the nurse practitioner as she moves to be with children and families in new ways.