PREFACE<br > T~ magic years are the years of early childhood. By<br >"magic" I do not mean that the child lives in an enchanted world<br >where all the deepest longings are satisfied. It is only in the minds<br >of adults that childhood is a paradise， a time at innocence and<br >serene joy. The memory of a Golden Age is a delusion for， ironic-<br >ally， none of us remembers this time at all. At best we carry with<br >us a ~ew dusty memories， a handful of blurred and distorted pic-<br >tures which often cannot even tell us why they should be re-<br >membered. This first period of childhood， roughly the first five<br >years of life， is submerged like a buried city， and when we come<br >back to these times with our children we are strangers and we<br >cannot easily find our way.<br > These are ~magiC years because the child in his early years is<br >a magician--In the psychological sense. His earliest conception<br >d the world ts a magical one; he believes that his actions and his<br >thoughts can bring about events. Later he extends this magic<br >system and fin~ human attributes in natural phenomena and sees<br >human or supra，human causes for natural events or for ordinary<br >ogcarte~ces in his life， Gradually during these first years the<br >child a~alres knowledge of an objective world and is able to free<br >his observations and his conclusions from the distortions of<br >Frlrdtlve thought.<br > But a magic world Is an unstable world， at times a spooky<br >world， and as the child gropes his way toward reason and an<br >obj~tive world he must wrestle with the dangerous creatures of<br >his lmsghmtion and the real and imagined dangers of the outer<br > ix<br >