Berkeley - A new study from the University of California, Berkeley, Center for Labor Research and Education finds that the $5.6 billion early childcare and education (ECE) industry supports $11.1 billion in economic output in California.

The study, "Economic Impacts of Early Care and Education in California," by Jenifer MacGillvary and Laurel Lucia, explores the economic effects of the ECE industry in California, which they say benefits the state economy as well as the children who receive care.

My name is Fabiola Silva and I'm a Child Care Provider in the Germantown Montgomery County area, early one morning, I received a telephone call from SEIU Local 500 my union, I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

Amazingly, I was advised that I was invited to participate in a meeting with First Lady, Michelle Obama. After the call ended, I think that I found myself stunned that this opportunity was presented to me and it really left me with many questions in my mind about what was going to happen during this meeting. I knew that I was extremely excited.

Nancy Rios and Ramon Salazar, who both work at a Panda Express restaurant, used to have a hard time coming up with the $250-300 a week that it costs to have a babysitter watch their three children in Oxnard, CA.

Then someone told Rios and Salazar that they could apply for the CalWorks child care program for low-income working families. Through CalWorks, caring for their children isn't only more affordable, but they both agreed that it made an immediate, positive difference in their children's lives, one they could see in only three months.

"They call it a school," Salazar said. "They have all the things a preschool would have."

"They've been speaking more clearly, too," Rios said, attributing the children's improved language skills to their interaction with the other kids.

Editor's Note: The Los Angeles Times published an editorial earlier this week outlining how cuts for 60,000 child care spots wasn't going to save the State of California any money. On the one hand, the cut doesn't add to the state budget reserve. On the other, many of the affected families won't be able to either pay for child care or keep their jobs, so they'll just have to ask the state for public assistance again.

This is the story of one of the affected families. Mrs. Yniguez' child care provider has already been told that she's unlikely to get paid by the state for October child care, a month earlier than the expected cutoff. The Yniguez family is paying the $200 per week they can afford, for now, and they will owe their provider another $760 per week for every week that she doesn't get paid, until Mrs. Yniguez is forced to give up her job.

My name is Ilene Yniguez and I have seven children from the ages of five months to eleven years old. My husband and I work full time to support our family, but we need help. We are constantly struggling and live from paycheck to paycheck. I was on the stage 3 child care program that was eliminated for working parents.

If I don't get help with child care I am going to be forced to quit my job. Even with a discount from our daycare provider, I have to pay $960 per week for our seven children. I only bring home $791 every two weeks.

It's not worth me working, but if I quit my job, I will not be able to pay my rent or bills. I'm in a lose-lose situation because no matter what I try to do, I will not be capable of supporting my family with our income cut in half.

I have been going in circles as to what to do to get child care. On Thursday I went to apply for welfare but because both my husband and I work full time we do not make the intake qualification of working under 100 hours per month. Even if I wasn't working we would make $200 over the intake limit as well. Our monthly bring home is only $4,230 for a family of nine.

As of October 1st, we are being charged for child care until the end of the month when the program is officially over. I have to pay back $4,032 which I obviously do not have. Plus, I'm most likely going to be forced to quit my job because I can't afford to pay for child care anymore.

What do you expect honest working families to do if they are forced to quit their jobs? Was the purpose of eliminating this program to send everyone back to the welfare line? You are punishing the families who worked hard to stay off welfare and who have been making an honest living by taking away this program. What do you propose now that all these parents will be out of a job because you took away their child care?

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.

Why is the worst pertussis epidemic in 55 years raging? From Squidalicious:

... Why are we seeing the worst pertussis epidemic in 55 years? Health officials says it is partially due to the cyclical nature of pertussis. But they also say it's due to parents' autism-related fears about vaccinating their kids, as NPR reported yesterday -- even though theories on vaccine-autism causation have been repeatedly dismissed -- because organizations like Generation Rescue are still flogging the vaccine theories ...

Whooping cough, once called the 100 day cough, can be fatal in babies, who require the protection of being surrounded by immunized adults and older children when they're too young for vaccinations themselves. This means family, teachers, caregivers and anyone else who spends a lot of time with infants and might be exposed to the disease.

For more information on vaccinations, the outbreak and how to identify pertussis, please visit the Centers for Disease Control pertussis vaccination fact sheet.

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.

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.

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.