Lisa Guernsey, director of the Early Education Initiative at the New America Foundation, outlines four things children need from their caregivers:

• Time for Conversation
• Time for Reading Aloud
• Time for Positive Discipline
• Time for Play

Guernsey writes about the need for parents to have enough time away from work with their children to have more relaxed, unhurried interactions: meandering conversations about nothing, story time, calm discipline without time pressure, active play away from the television.

Children need this sort of time with their parents to develop social and mental skills that will serve them well later in life. That's one reason why it's so important to support paid sick leave and protected family leave. At such young ages, what children need most to learn are the fundamentals of how they're supposed to act, and they learn mostly by imitation.

Though for parents whose children are in an early care setting away from the home, these can also be taken as markers for quality care by a professional and questions to ask about the care environment.

Do providers take the time to converse with children so they can be encouraged in their spoken language skills? Do they read to children and have books available? Is discipline positive, calm and patient? Do the children have time for self-directed, imaginative play with appropriate supervision?

Early educators can't provide all of what children need, which is why it's so important to fight the time poverty faced by many families. But whoever they're with at a given time, healthy kids need healthy relationships with the adults around them.

(California's late state budget has been hurting child care providers, holding up reimbursement checks for time they'd already worked. Yesterday, some of the affected educators and caregivers held a press conference where family child care provider, and SEIU member, Tonia McMillian told her story.)

Hello, my name is Tonia McMillian, and I'm a licensed home-based child care provider in Bellflower. I care for 11 children, many of whom receive state subsidies to help their parents afford child care. The current budget delay has presented a mix of emotions for me and the families that I care for. For the first time in my 15 years of child care service, I have been forced to face the reality that I might have to shut my doors.

Child care has been my passion and desire for many, many years. After completing my child care education at Long Beach City College, I decided that I would make a difference in the lives of children and, as far as I know, I did just what I set out to accomplish.

However, maintaining my business and my home with no money has proven to be a monumental challenge.

Because of the current budget stalemate, I have not been paid to care for some of these children for the last 3 months and others for the last 2 months. I can no longer plan or budget for my week. I have to take each day as it comes. I've extended and, in some cases over-extended, arrangements to meet my needs, i.e. utility bills, food, rent, and many other bills.

My parents need the help that the subsidies provide and are extremely grateful that I have not shut my doors...yet. Without child care, my single father who is raising his son as a single parent, will be forced to quit his job. Did I mention that he is considered one of California's working poor? Yet, through his job, he contributes back to our economy and he can walk tall with his head held high knowing that he is working to make his life and the life of his son better.

But the loss of this income has made it extremely hard to continue to run my business. I have taken on a part-time job in addition to my child care business to pay the bills for myself and my own two children, and I have talked with all of my parents about the real possibility that in the coming weeks I may have to shut my doors in order to find other work to support my own family. This is a decision that is truly devastating for me, for I have been an excellent child care provider for 15 years and love this work, and I know that these children and parents are going to really struggle in my absence.

Almost every other child care provider in my area is in the same situation as I am. We've all had to cut costs dramatically since our paychecks were halted, including laying off staff who help us pay more attention to each child in our care and who also badly need these jobs.

Worse yet, the money we normally receive from the Federal Food Program is being withheld simply because the state of California can't contribute its meager 5% share. Think about that--tens of thousands of providers in California aren't getting their monthly food program checks--which can be anywhere from 100 to 1000 dollars a month--because the state can't contribute their tiny 5% share and won't release the much greater federal portion.

That's millions of dollars being left on the table - dollars that are usually recycled back into the community through the grocery stores where we shop. Hundreds of thousands of children in the state depend on these funds to help them get nutritious meals that they might not otherwise get.

I know providers who are now feeding their own families peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and ramen noodles every day - just so they can afford to feed their daycare children.

I came to speak here today to put a face on this budget crisis. This is about the future of quality child care in our state, not partisan politics or politicians squabbling in Sacramento. Children are suffering. Providers and their families are suffering. And if a solution isn't found soon we are going to be doing irreversible harm to our state's youngest and most vulnerable citizens.

Thank You.

[Editor's Note: Recently, this blog discussed how California's late state budget was hurting child care providers, holding up reimbursement checks for time they'd worked. Today, some of the affected educators and caregivers held a press conference. SEIU member Silvia Hernandez prepared and delivered these remarks.]

Hello, my name is Silvia Hernandez and I'm a licensed child care provider in the San Fernando Valley. I'm here today to let people know the terrible effects the lack of budget has had on the California child care system.

Before this recent budget stalemate, California was already in the middle of a child care crisis. Providers like me who care for subsidized children have not had a rate increase in over 5 years- while our costs of living during that same time have risen dramatically.

The effect of this inequality has been to have thousands of quality providers leave the profession to find other work in order to support their families. And what happens when thousands of providers leave? Quality goes down. Because the state failed to act for so many years under the current administration, many of our children- the future of our society- have not received the kind of the care that they deserve and is need to prepare them for school.

Throughout this budget impasse, we as providers have tried as hard as we can to make sure that we maintained the same activities, food, and staff in our day cares as always.

Since most of us providers have not gotten paid since June our services have, unfortunately, begun to suffer.

With every day that passes we are faced with the realization that we will have to lay off our employees, reduce the hours we work, and for many of us it will mean that we will be forced to close the doors of our businesses that we once worked so hard to open. This is an unfortunate effect of the situation we are living in.

I am a single mother with 2 kids and a mortgage. If I don't get paid this upcoming month I will be on the verge of losing my house and have to lay off both of my employees, who are also single mothers.

Without employees and without a house I can't run a business and without a business I can't feed my family. We cannot hold out any longer, good providers like myself are leaving the profession every day to find other work leaving needy kids without quality care!

You thought child care quality had been going down BEFORE? Without an immediate solution it's going to plummet to levels that pain me to think about. Its going to lead to parents losing their jobs because they can't find any care whatsoever, or even worse parents leaving small children home alone all day to fend for themselves while they work.

We need to pass a budget NOW, not just for providers but for the children! Every day without one sends us deeper into a hole which will do irreparable harm to our society and our future.

With child care budgets being cut across the country, the words of this Oregon mother of four are being echoed all over:

"If the program goes away, I will lose everything," [Crystal Lanier] said Tuesday, while she and others visited lawmakers in hopes of winning a last-minute reprieve. "I won't be able to work, I won't be able to afford day care, I don't have family support here, and I'll lose my home."

It sounds a lot like the plight of a New Mexico mother of two:

"It's a dire situation," Malinda Nicholas said. "Child care costs about $1,000 a month, and my take home from work is about $1,600."

With demand for workers so low on the job market and so many experienced workers seemingly shut out of the job market, everyone can understand the simple, harsh logic of what happens to a family whose one income depends on affordable child care.

California's working class families depend on child care subsidies that have been held up for 91 days now waiting on a state budget that may still be another week away.

The governor and the legislature can't agree to fund these services, but they're still getting regular paychecks. The same can't be said for the low-income child care providers being asked to keep working through open-ended 'delays' to their reimbursements. From the article:

"It's not a cut in services. It's a delay in provider payments," [Eloisa Mercado of Solano Family & Children's Services agency] said. "We really appreciate them to continue the services for the children."

... [Child care provider Susan] O'Mara is not sure how long she can go without getting paid. About half of the nine or 10 children she cares for daily are in the subsidized program, she said.

How many people get asked to keep doing their job on a volunteer basis when their paychecks stop coming?

If the government doesn't come through, providers are likely to go out of business. That's hard on the providers, hard on families who won't be able to find day care, hard on California families who can't afford day care:

Child care generally costs $150 to $250 per week for children under age 3. That's a steep bill for parents working at or slightly above minimum wage. For Bartels, paying out of pocket for just one baby's child care would eat nearly half of her income at her $8 per hour job, or $320 a week.

That's hard on children whose parents are already having a hard time coming up with both rent and grocery money.

Republicans in Sacramento continue to insist that cutting social spending such as child care supports for low income families is important for the state's budget. Which means that there also won't be much in the way of help if parents lose their jobs because they can't get stable child care.

California's unemployment is now the third highest in the nation. It would be hard to pick a worse time to worry more about economic abstractions

This past week, the media remembered to care about the poor, shocked as they were by the Census Bureau's news that 1 in 7 Americans now lives in poverty.

It's not a surprising outcome when middle class jobs are going away and families that used to be middle class are having to learn new survival strategies.

Disturbing as this is, 1 in 5 American children now lives in poverty and as this article by Amy Novotney in this month's Monitor on Psychology points out, this can have a serious impact on a child's entire learning career. The cognitive and scholastic impairments can even persist for the long term if their families' incomes improve.

In spite of our recent series pointing out serious differences with the Chamber of Commerce on closing the gender pay gap, credit should be given where it's due.

They've actually made a great case that money spent on early education gives better returns than educational investments at any other age. That includes vocational training for adults.

The earlier in life you spend on teaching children, they show, the better the returns.

Maggie Cary recommends calling a square box a cube, and using other geometry terms to talk about everyday things, to help get children used to the words before they need to use them in a math class.

This is the fourth in a series examining issues raised by a blog post from Chamber of Commerce Senior Communications Director Brad Peck, where he suggested that women's interest in closing the gender pay gap amounted to a "fetish for money," and the subsequent apologies for it by himself and Chamber COO David Chavern. Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 at the links.

Although Peck's meaning could perhaps be interpreted differently, one way to read his suggestion that women "pick the right partner" in the context of a post about wages is that if a woman wants to make the "individual choice" to have children, she can compensate for the decreased pay she will receive by picking a husband who earns enough to make up for her depressed income.

Of course, there is a term for a woman whose only interest in a male partner is his paycheck, and it's not a nice one - gold digger.

Jenifer Monroe has to get four kids ready for school every day. As you might expect, she's put some thought into this:

7) Stick to the either/or rule: "Red jacket or blue today?" "Pigtails or ponytails?" rather than, "Which jacket do you want?" or "How should we do your hair?"

... Before it's time to get the kids up, I get up and get myself 100 percent ready to walk out the door. This is the same principle as when you fly and the attendant stresses the value of placing your own oxygen mask on before assisting others. I almost always get a few things done for work while my house is still quiet, so my cushion is about two hours. ...

A young person's brain will still be developing executive function, the processing skills that allow people to focus and sustain attention as well as manage their emotions, throughout the teen years and perhaps into the early 20s.

Without a well-developed internal 'executive', children lose focus more easily and have a harder time overcoming minor frustrations. For that, for many years, they'll be reliant on (often harried) parents and caregivers to keep them on track.

So, until they get a little older, it's important to give them choices that both let them feel in control while staying on task. That just helps everyone have a better day.