My step dad is quite weird for he calls strangers things like ‘buddy’ and ‘my friend’.

One of the fantastic contributions to our Observations activity - the activity we designed for the newly opened Anna Freud Room in the Freud Museum in London.

Anna Freud devoted her life to the emotional wellbeing of children. Her work was based on making detailed written observations of the children in her care. The activity White Wall Yellow Door designed is based upon this methodology, but in a reversal of the usual model where the adult observes the child, children are invited to observe the adults, and to record their observations on specially produced Observation Cards, which are left in a card index box in the museum.

The responses have been brilliant. Here, the child queries a social convention that has become such a normalized part of everyday speech as to be almost invisible.

It’s through this kind of questioning that we have the chance to get a glimpse of the familiar anew.