Nurturing Infant Joy, Connection and Curiosity in the Earliest Years - Part 3 Joy

On 6th June 2025, early years professionals from across Northern Ireland gathered at Stranmillis College in Belfast to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Early-Years.org. This vibrant, thought-provoking conference brought together educators, researchers, and practitioners to reflect on the past and envision the future of early childhood care and education. I was honoured to run two workshop sessions as part of the celebrations.”
This follows previous posts on: Connection, Curiosity.

Let’s finish on a high note—with joy.

It’s not just a nice-to-have. Joy is the most natural expression of a baby’s flourishing. And when we pay attention to it—really take it seriously—we see how fundamental it is. Not just for children, but for all of us.

I was first pulled into this world by a little-known study from 1975: an “ecological study of glee” in preschool classrooms. Lawrence Sherman sat in on 596 preschool sessions (this was pre-video!) and watched as delight spread through small groups—spontaneously, contagiously, from one child to the next. Decades later, in 2001, it won an Ig Nobel Prize for “research that makes people laugh, then think.” It still does both. That work has quietly been a lodestar for me—showing that joy can be studied, tracked, even taken seriously by science. Because children’s joy is not trivial. It is vital.

Babies wake up happy. I know this because I asked their parents. In a sleep study I ran in Brazil and the UK, we asked parents to rate their babies’ morning mood for 10 days. Brazilian babies averaged 8.2 out of 10; British babies, a slightly more stoic 7.8. But every baby outscored me. What struck me wasn’t just the high numbers—it was the consistency. “That’s how they start their day,” I’d say. “What are they so happy about?”

Well, for one, they are loved. In the best cases, they’re held, fed, cared for. But more than that—they are free. Free to express themselves with radical authenticity. Babies don’t hide their feelings, they don’t second-guess your reaction. They are fully present and wholly sincere. And when we respond in kind—when we meet their gaze, laugh back, or mirror their sounds—that joy loops, expands, and lifts us both.

This isn’t just poetic. It’s developmental. That sense of joyful absorption is what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi famously called “flow.” He spent his career trying to understand what makes people truly happy—not in fleeting bursts, but as a sustained state of deep well-being. The answer? It’s not wealth or success. It’s the feeling of being totally absorbed in something meaningful, something just challenging enough. Not too hard to frustrate, not too easy to bore.

He found this in athletes and musicians, yes—but also in prisoners and postmen. In anyone who could find that sweet spot between skill and challenge. And if you’re looking for people who live there naturally, look no further than babies.

Babies are in flow all the time. Every day they learn something they couldn’t do the day before. Every moment is on the edge of their ability. They are motivated from within, not for gold stars or applause, but from a deep, embodied desire to do. And when they succeed—when the spoon reaches the mouth, the block stacks just right, the song finally gets the right hand clap—joy erupts.

“Joy is seeing the child being themselves,” one practitioner said during our afternoon discussion. “Not having to comply. Just being happy in their own skin.”

And yet, joy is strangely absent from most formal curricula. We track developmental milestones and school readiness, but we rarely ask: Did they love it? Did it light them up? One participant asked, “What would your setting look like if joy were your top planning priority?” That’s a radical question. But maybe it shouldn’t be.

Many agreed that joy often arrives “as a lucky bonus”—but what if we designed for it? One educator put it simply: “Joy needs to be planted, not just noticed.” Another reflected, “At the end of every day, we should be asking: what was the moment of joy—for you, for the children?”

This doesn’t mean turning every moment into a carnival. It means tuning in. Trusting joy as a signal. Observing when a child lights up—and letting that shape our practice. “That pop noise I made with my cheek?” said one attendee. “They laughed so hard. Then they tried it. Then others joined in. It wasn’t planned. But it became a moment of shared delight—and learning.”

Joy also builds resilience. One group reflected on how laughter at a toppled tower helps children frame failure not as defeat, but as a game to be played again. “Laughing at mistakes teaches you it’s okay to try,” someone said. “It builds bounce.”

Importantly, joy is not universal in the same way for every child. “Some children laugh more easily than others,” one participant noted, “and for neurodivergent children, laughter can signal something else entirely—like anxiety or overload.” That’s why practitioners emphasised the need to be, as one called it, “the observant observer.” Watch the child, not just the grin.

And we can’t separate child joy from adult wellbeing. Over and over again, staff noted: our own joy matters. “If you’re happy, the children feel it,” someone said. “Prioritising staff wellbeing—letting staff move, mix, reset—is key to creating joyful spaces for children too.” Another offered a beautiful daily practice: “End each day by asking: What was the highlight? What was the joy?”

And perhaps the most profound insight came from philosophy and spirituality. Contemplative traditions—from Zen to early Christianity—have long held that joy arises not from escaping the world, but from being fully in it. Present. Attentive. Alive to the moment. And babies are masters of this. They don’t dwell in the past or plan the future. They explore what’s in front of them. They live the wisdom we spend lifetimes seeking.

So, let’s flip the lens. The big question isn’t how to bring joy to children. It’s: how do we protect it? How do we learn from it? How do we stop schooling it out of them?

Babies start with joy. That’s the baseline. That’s the design. Our job is not to add it in—but to preserve, protect, and follow where it leads.

Reflect & Discuss

• What brings visible joy to the babies in your care? How do you know?
• Is joy part of your planning—or just a happy accident?
• If joy were the core of your curriculum, what would change?

The Takeaway

Connection, curiosity, and joy are not soft extras. They are the foundations. They are how learning begins. They are how life begins. And in the earliest years, they are inseparable from each other.

Thanks to everyone who shared stories, reflections, and laughter in Belfast. You reminded me that joy is not just worth studying—it’s worth building everything around.

Let’s start there.