understanding of the child has changed over the time – from the opinion that the child is an incompetent being to an image of the child as a competent, active and social being who is the subject of his own development. The way the educator understands the child can be connected to the quality of the educational process, implicit pedagogies and ways in which the educator reflects and revises his knowledge and behaviors. This is precisely why this paper will focus on the importance of understanding the child and what implications the educator's perception of the child's understanding has on the educational process. Therefore, the theoretical part of the work refers to the presentation of the new paradigm of the child and childhood, the comparison of the curriculum of the city of Berlin and the Republic of Croatia, the understanding of the concept of understanding and the presentation of the role of the educator in better understanding the child. The empirical part of the work refers to gaining insight into the personal understandings and experiences of Croatian and German educators about the ways in which they determine the process of understanding a child and their role in it. Given the nature of the goal of this research, a qualitative, narrative approach with elements of an ethnographic approach was used since it looks at the participants in their natural environment and starts from their reference frame – personal stories (Cohen, Manion, Morrison, 2007; Halmi, 2013). Nine educators from the Primorsko-goranska County, six educators from the Međimurje County and seven educators from Berlin participated in the research and for the purpose of data collection was used semi-structured questionnaire. Through thematic networks, an analysis of the obtained results is given, which gives insight into the importance of educators understanding the child and the ways of contributing to it.