Professional assistant pedagogues conduct pedagogical counseling with students on a daily basis, which makes pedagogical counseling one of the most important areas of their work. This means that pedagogical counseling is very challenging for pedagogues, and in order to respond as efficiently as possible to the challenges and requirements of pedagogical counseling and improve the competencies needed to perform well as a counselor, they must continuously improve their skills. However, pedagogical counseling is an area of pedagogy that has to date not only been insufficiently researched, but also insufficiently developed as a practice of a professional assistant pedagogue, and the process of advisory work of pedagogues with students lacks professional and scientific papers, especially in Croatia. For these reasons, this research covers precisely this topic in order to contribute new knowledge to pedagogical science and practice. Consequently, the aim of this research is to examine how pedagogues understand pedagogical counseling of students and their own role as counselors, what their experiences and needs in pedagogical counseling of students are and how they assess their own competence to conduct pedagogical counseling and successfully respond to the challenges it presents. A semi-structured individual interview was conducted on a sample of six pedagogues from Zagreb primary schools. The results of the research show that all participants consider pedagogical counseling of students and their role as counselors to be one of the most important areas of their work. Likewise, most of them believe that they are competent for pedagogical counseling, which they effectively implement in their work. They believe that the pedagogy program did not give them the necessary knowledge and skills for quality pedagogical counseling, but attribute their performance to their personal motivation for professional development in this area. In addition, the participants consider pedagogical counseling to be a very challenging area of work where many of their needs need to be met in order for it to be conducted well. All participants agree that their key need is lifelong learning, which is not only a personal challenge, but also a stepping stone for successful pedagogical counseling.