This document intentionally possesses an inherent flexibility: it could, and hopefully will, exist as an early years framework document in its own right for those fortunate enough to be working in permissive, non-statutory professional environments; and it can also be used alongside other curricular documents in order to galvanise and inspire practitioners to temper the worst aspects of such didactic, professionally disempowering approaches. It is also very much an emerging document, in whose future development we would wish all practitioners, academics etc. to feel able to participate – in other words, a living document which will always be ‘in process’. For we do not believe that anyone (including ourselves) has either the right or the capability to lay down a didactic, universal document that will effectively capture all that is germane to the subtle, complex and sometime mysterious world of early childhood.