This dissertation aims to study the practice of authority exerted by the adults, parents and professors, on the daily life of children of a private school in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, having as a basis a methodology that takes into consideration the child as the subject of the research. Thus, the understanding of these different kinds of practice considers the point of view of the children, the way they appropriate and present them to us, understanding the importance of playing for the child to get to know its world and, from the relationship with its pairs and the adults, to produce its cultures from the more ample culture where they are inserted. Michail Bakhtin was a special interlocutor in this passage, supplying the theoretical and methodological knowledge for it. The analysis begins with a dialogue between the thoughts of authors who are identified with studies about infancy, the child and the childhood education (Manoel Sarmento, Manoel Pinto, Sonia Kramer, Willian Corsaro, Cleopatre Montandon, Regine Sirota, among others). The first chapter points out the question at a specific historical moment: the contemporary world and the controversies that surround it. The second chapter presents the school and the family, not only as historical constructions, but also in its concrete aspects of the researched institutions. Finally, the third chapter brings an analysis of the practices of authority, made from the observation of the interaction between children and adults and of children among themselves. Thus, the present study is an invitation to look into the practice of authority from the stand-point of what children show and present while citizens that produce culture and that are developed by culture at the same time.