La esencia del niño

Understanding the child and who he is has been a concern throughout my life as an educator. Throughout my years as an early childhood education teacher and later as a teacher at a pedagogical university, I have lived with children in different contexts who, despite their differences and individualities, seemed to share qualities in the essence of their being. At the same time, I was able to collect some expressions in my field notebooks, interviews, workshops for parents and exchanges with students specializing in undergraduate and postgraduate initial education, as well as a doctoral thesis about the child and the configurations that are woven through around it, documents that led me to write a condensed final writing in these pages, and even graphically represent some ideas in graphs at the end of each part. My intention is to present a reflective description of the child figure without academic pretensions; an accessible text for all those who in one way or another are interested in the subject, care for and educate children. Being in the presence of a child is almost always an experience that opens the doors of our hearts, due to its inviting character of love and affection and the ability to be amazed by everything, an attitude that infects us. Hence, writing this text has also been an experience of love combined with the deepest respect for infant humanity; same that deserves to be revealed in a world full of contrasts and adult conflicts that sometimes little build our condition of being. This book that I return to its main actors and versions, is perhaps a return to look at the beauty and sensitivity of our humanity, to rediscover that child that we were and rescue the most longed for dreams of him.