Gloria Clemens had been a nurse for 12 years and liked her job in a pediatrician's office. She was also the mother of six, with a seventh child on the way.

Clemens liked her job but couldn't afford the child care that would have let her keep it. So 24 years ago, she started a family child care business in her own home that meets the needs of other working families.

Still going strong, she and her two aides work 10 hour days caring for 11 children.

Setting An Example

Clemens serves a range of families, and watches three children whose mother, Anna*, qualifies for state assistance with child care while she's going to school. She said the program, CalWorks, was good because it helped parents become self-reliant and set a good example for their children.

Video from ABC Action News, Tampa Bay, FL:

A family child care provider for 13 years, Susan Austin cares for 8 children whose attendance is supported by the Stage 3 child care threatened by Gov. Schwarzenegger's veto. A single mother who was on public assistance herself 40 years ago, all of Austin's clients are single mothers who are also working their way to independence.

Though if the program closes entirely, Austin says, "I will have no business. I tried to work with my parents to try to keep a roof over my head, but they couldn't afford it." All she has now, she said, "is my home and my dignity."

But Austin doesn't think of her child care as a job, but a career and a lifestyle. She says her reward is "when kids graduate college. When I take a parent from living in a car with two little kids, to getting on public assistance, to working, to her son serving two terms in Iraq."

Then there's something else Austin has; plenty of stories about the families she works with, takes care of and clearly worries for. Families like Monica's*, a single mom who's had her three children in Austin's care for some time now.

A family child care provider for 6 years, Laurie Sanders of Los Angeles, CA, has "a passion for kids [and] wanted to see them in a safe environment."

Sanders, on providing good early care: "Have a daily schedule that's consistent. It helps children know what comes next and easily transition from one activity to the next."

Sanders is a former welfare recipient whose daughter got hurt while in the care of a relative. She decided to open her own child care business to keep her kids safe, and to provide that same level of care for other people's children, as well.

Right now, Sanders cares for 14 children, all long-term clients, from five months to nine years of age. Eight of those children are supported by Stage 3 funding, which could soon be lost. This would be a blow to both Sanders' business and the families who depend on it.

Sanders' advice for new parents: "Spend quality time with them, even for an hour or two. That Mommy and Me time. Kids really do need that. And I tell them to always praise their children."

"All of my parents are single mothers," Sanders said. "All of their problems so far that I've noticed are financial and transportation issues. Providing food is often an issue."

To make up for the food their mothers can't always afford, Sanders partners with the Korean American Food Service program. Depending on need and their parents' work schedules, she provides breakfast, two snacks, lunch, and occasionally dinner, for children who are with her between 8-13 hours per day.

Sanders attended the October 26th rally in Long Beach to ask Governor Schwarzenegger to extend Stage 3 child care funding. The cuts have been halted by a judge through this week.

Photo, from left to right: Laurie Sanders, Elysha Johnson and Destiny Jackson at the Long Beach rally.

A major interdisciplinary study of child development emphasizes the importance of the first five years of a child's life in everything from their gene expression to their ability to properly read emotions in others.

Key findings:

• From 0-3, children need to be right up close to a lot of loving adult faces.
• Seeing lots of angry or sad expressions can make children hyper-vigilant and hinder developing concentration skills.
• Language learned during emotional bonding experiences, like during story time, promotes good language skills later on.
• Chances to play in low-stress environments are more important than hitting developmental milestones on a particular timetable.

Brain Rules for Baby - The Parent Quiz from Mark Pearson on Vimeo.

Mark Pearson talks about how to nurture young children so they'll grow up as smart and successful as possible.

The best news? It doesn't take a college degree or a lot of money for fancy toys and heavily marketed, expensive educational products. Empathy, age appropriate communication and praising children for their work ethic instead of their talent, will all go a long way towards promoting good habits and emotional stability.

NAEYC posted a useful fact sheet on how to deal with biting in young children and why they do it.

They offer several strategies for positive guidance, reducing children's stress, and setting expectations.

Most importantly, children need to learn other ways of expressing their frustrations, which their caregivers can reinforce by responding calmly and not using violent punishment in response.

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.

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.

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.