The missing reflection: Practitioner reflexivity and the incomplete story of the unique child

The principle of the “unique child” has become a central element of early childhood policy and practice, encouraging practitioners to recognise children's individuality, capabilities and diverse experiences. While this framing has supported important shifts towards child-centred approaches, it can position the child as the primary site through which difference and development are understood. This paper suggests that such a focus risks leaving part of the relational picture unseen. Drawing on relational, posthuman and new materialist perspectives, the paper argues that children's identities, behaviours and experiences emerge through encounters involving practitioners, materials, environments and wider relational conditions rather than through the child alone. In this sense, the story of the unique child remains only partially told when the practitioner who participates within these encounters remains outside the frame. The paper introduces the unique practitioner to explore how practitioners’ histories, identities and assumptions participate in shaping what becomes noticeable, meaningful and possible within practice. Through practitioner vignettes, multiplicity and the metaphor of relational superposition, reflexivity is conceptualised as a means of making aspects of this participation visible while holding alternative interpretations open. The paper argues that recognising the unique practitioner does not simply place two unique individuals alongside one another but makes visible the shared relational conditions through which the child becomes encountered, interpreted and known.