Introduction

What Our Children Teach Us: Lessons in Joy, Love and Awareness
by Piero Ferrucci

“Live with children long enough and beauty, love, innocence, play, pain, and death, everything appears in a new light….”
-from WHAT OUR CHILDREN TEACH US

“My children have an extraordinary power to bring me back to the present. I receive a phone call, a taxation matter that drives me crazy. I feel persecuted. Jonathan looks at me. He smiles. He is waiting, his gaze a universe in which I may enter. It is an open invitation. He smiles yet again. The worries begin to dissipate. Now I am really with him. The black clouds have disappeared. Welcome back to the present, Dad.”
-from WHAT OUR CHILDREN TEACH US

Children: They have the ability to turn our lives upside down, to disrupt our plans and our sleep, to try our patience, and to elicit our most ferocious love. But children also have the power to teach us the greatest lessons we'll ever learn….

Now Piero Ferrucci, a noted psychologist, author, and the father of two young sons, reveals how the journey of parenthood can be a spiritual path, a succession of experiences that can enrich and transform us like no religious retreat or course of psychotherapy ever could.

Through sometimes hilarious, often moving, and always insightful anecdotes taken from his own home life, Ferrucci eloquently shows how each moment of parenting, no matter how trivial or challenging, holds hidden surprises and opportunities for change.

For instance…
He drives an hour to take his son Emilio to the zoo, only to find that Emilio isn't interested in the lions, monkeys, and giraffes but in chasing ordinary pigeons-and in the midst of his frustration Ferrucci realizes that to Emilio the pigeons are not commonplace, because nothing is commonplace to a child. Everything is vital and interesting. And as he looks through the eyes of his child, he sees the world in a new light.

He watches Jonathan, his younger son, then just a few months old, nurse. Time does not exist for Jonathan. He enjoys the warmth and skin contact, his mother's heartbeat, the taste of the milk. This is perfect peace. And Ferrucci can't help but feel tranquil, too, as Jonathan teaches him the importance of being in the moment.

Convinced that through their honest hearts and open minds children can help us to reconnect with our own innocence… cultivate patience and gratitude… live more spontaneously… rediscover the pleasures of play… be profoundly present in our relationships…. and, ultimately, become better parents and happier people, Ferrucci encourages us to take our children's hands. Once we do, they will lead us to a place where we are more in touch with our true essence and the many blessings in our lives.

Through lively, moving, and charmingly candid anecdotes that will strike a chord with every parent, Piero Ferrucci shows us the myriad ways in which our children can help us rediscover wonder, cultivate joy and patience, and open ourselves to a richer and more vital world…

“It sometimes seems to me that I am looking in a mirror. This happens because my children imitate me. One day I accidentally drop a piece of paper. Emilio immediately points his finger at me accusingly and angrily exclaims: 'You are not to do that! Pick it up at once.' A rather comical picture, this child all heated up like a little preacher… until I realize that is the way I talk to him, my finger admonishing when he throws things on the floor. I am the preacher!”

Copyright © 2001 by Piero Ferrucci

About the Author

Piero Ferrucci is a psychologist. He lives with his wife and two children in the country near Florence, Italy. He wrote What We May Be: the Vision and Techniques of Psychosynthesis, Inevitable Grace, and, with Laura Huxley, The Child of Your Dreams. He edited Aldous Huxley's lecture series, The Human Situation<. His latest book is What Our Children Teach Us.