Susan Stephenson’s book, “Joyful Child: Montessori Global Wisdom from Birth to Three,” is an eye-opener for many and a reminder for many others. And we cannot have too many reminders. When we are busy or stressed or hungry, when we are tired or distracted, we tend to regress to the old patterns of being with children, the ones we absorbed from our parents during our own childhood. At those times all that we have learned and all the habits we worked so hard to establish, fall away and the old ways of relating to young children return with a power we never suspected they still had over us. All of our good intentions are not enough to keep us living with our young children in the way we have chosen. We need the constancy, the ever-fresh companionship, of a book like this, an inspiring and practical book that will be our partner through these most important, these crucial first years of our child’s precious life.
