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Taking a critical look at forty-two years of practice amounts to recounting a personal experience, because there is no standard profile for a paediatrician over the course of his or her career. There has been an evolution towards a growing commitment, an increasingly strong involvement in areas of paediatrics that I would not have been able to define when I started out, in particular towards the therapeutic meaning of the consultation itself. Such a reflection emphasizes the importance of clinical sense and examination. The evolution is towards a “care envelope” based on the idea of family dynamics, underpinned by “correspondences” as the cement of internal and professional coherence.