At every moment new human beings are fully human. And yet, we somehow and too often underestimate how sensitive, appropriate, responsive and caring very young children are by nature. Very early, before Carly Elizabeth could crawl she was picking single threads off the carpet and examining them by turning the specimen between her tiny fingers. This evening at almost twenty months she was sitting in mama’s lap flipping pages of a book like a librarian. Earlier in the day Carly was climbing up on the back of a leather sofa, walking like a tight rope acrobat and falling-laughing perfectly in my arms. Of course she could have fallen off the other side and broken her leg or worse, but she didn’t. Her concentration and balance were keen. Why should she? There were no distractions.

Love transforms effort and attention into near constant nurturing, and nurturing is a transformative practice. Years ago Joseph Chilton Pearce described how all learning in the early years involves movement and, at seventeen months, Carly Elizabeth is in near perpetual motion. She never stops! She weighs twenty-two pounds and I, a strapping one-hundred and seventy. You would think I could keep up. Not a chance. It takes a village.