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

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.