Speech and language therapy

The twenty-first entry is la guidance parentale, and both of its words will mislead an English reader who believes he is looking at his own. « Parental guidance » in English is above all a film rating: the two letters on a poster, the line advising that parental guidance is suggested. Nothing clinical attaches to it at all. And « guidance » on its own is an ordinary broad word — careers guidance, guidance from the top, a guidance note — the kind that turns up in any office in the country. French uses la guidance for none of that. It is a borrowing that came in by one door only, the door of the consulting room, and it lives almost nowhere else: beside this entry stands la guidance infantile and very little more. For everything the English word does in daily life, French reaches instead for les conseils, l’accompagnement or l’orientation. So this entry advises nobody about a film. It names the hour spent working with the parents rather than with the child, which is exactly why the sentence beside it says that it changes more than the exercise does.