To offer support before problems develop into greater difficulties is an important quality in the social services' work with children and families. An increased focus on early support is addressed in the political debate as a way to hinder children from being recruited into criminal gangs. The essay aims to investigate how parents with children under six in the outskirts of Stockholm experience and use parental counselling. A thematic analyse of nine semi-structured interviews with parents that have received parental counselling, shows that the parents describe counselling as an open talk with a professional friend, a safe space to explore their own parenting, their relationship with the child and the partner as well as coparenting and to explore how received advices works out in their own parenting. The results are analysed from a psychopathological developmental perspective as well as from the concept of governmentality. Risk- and protective factors regarding parent, child and family seem to have been addressed in the counselling but not factors in the demographic environment. The parents’ motivation to seek support can be understood as an internalized eager to be led. This raises questions whether such an internalized motivation is needed to be attracted by the counselling.