Drawing on the tradition of childhood studies, this study explores how children's problems are being conceptualised by primary school teachers in Finland and Norway and what kind of institutional childhood is reflected in those conceptualisations. I use thematic content analysis to analyse data derived from two primary schools in Tampere, Finland, and two in Trondheim, Norway. In both Nordic contexts, problems were conceptualised in terms of children's performance, welfare and behaviour. The results imply that the welfare (or care) perspective to childhood, along with more instrumental perspectives of learning outcomes and behaviour management, is essential in Nordic primary education.