Chapter Two explains how a child's individual agency develops through interaction with its caretakers. Later chapters will explore how social agency develops as a result of social structures, but this chapter focuses on agency as an element of human interaction. Social interaction is where intrapersonal processes intersect with social structures; it is influenced by the characters of those who are involved in the communication and by the social categories that shape its context. But both personality and social structures are in turn shaped by social interactions; there is a process of mutual interaction involving intrapersonal, interpersonal and macro social processes (Coté and Levine, 2002; Verkuyten, 2005).

Social interactions have a dynamic of their own, which is discussed in this chapter. Agency at an interactional level is about the voice of the participants being heard, about their contribution to the exchange of thoughts in encounters, and about their capacity to present and negotiate identities. Interacting agents are in a process of permanent transformation. As explored in Chapter One, ‘agency’ refers to an individual's ability to actively take position in different times and locations, without losing a personal, stabilising anchor that makes continuity possible and acknowledges the boundaries of the self and others. ‘Interactive agency’ refers to a performative capacity to act with a certain degree of autonomy and to take position in relation to other people. It goes with both the protection of one's personal integrity and respect for the other's boundaries.

Becoming an agent in communication is a learning process. Children are trained to become active agents when they are addressed as participants, as individuals who make a difference. Interactive agency is developed by the appeal to a moral position rather than simply by acquiring communicative skills or interactive competencies. Developing communicative agency means learning to consider how to act in the right way in variable situations. This means not only a correct orientation toward external norms but also the ability to refer to internalised norms (Sokol et al, 2004).

The development of agency is a process of gaining and building trust in social relations, developing social responsibility and gradually becoming familiar with social manners. In general, children's voices have become louder in modern family life, but this is not the case in all families.