Today, we are all together in Castellanza to welcome a newborn: a new book that Grazia has brought to light: It's a gift for the world. With this book in hand, we must be missionaries, share it with everyone, and defend the right to free growth, from birth, as Montessori and Costa Gnocchi did over the last century. To begin this very important discussion on child care 0-3, I begin with Maria Montessori's thoughts on the newborn.

“What is our civilization? Is it a progressive aid to facilitate human adaptation to his environment? If so, who experiences a more sudden and more radical change of environment than that of a newborn child? And yet, what care has our civilization created to help the newborn, that being who must undergo the most difficult adaptation, passing suddenly, at birth, from one existence to another?”

Until now, he had grown up nestled there, where a warm liquid created for him, so he could rest better, protected him from every shock, every temperature imbalance; a place where not even the slightest ray of light, nor the faintest sound, had ever reached him. And now he leaves that environment to live in the air. The change is sudden, without successive stages of transition: he, who had previously been at rest, suddenly has to submit to the tiring work of coming into the light. His body is almost crushed, as if an adult were being forced to pass under a terrible millstone, which shifted and unhinged his joints.