My brother taught me my most valuable parenting lesson. You can buy your kid the latest educational toy, enroll her in Mandarin and sign her up for soccer, tee-ball and yoga, but what she really needs is your time.

This sounds easier than it is. Kids often live in the moment, while parents often live in many moments - work, family and the virtual worlds of their smart phones. Giving your kids time means ignoring your Blackberry, the growing pile of bills on your desk and the latest scratch on the minivan.

This lesson occurred to me as I checked out Ellen Galinsky’s new book, “Mind in the Making: The Seven Essential Skills Every Child Needs.” Galinsky’s book is not another parenting flavor of the month to hit bookstores. Instead, over the last eight years the veteran researcher gathered the findings and thinking of 70 leading researchers to figure out what kids really need in the modern world.

She came away with seven essential life skills: focus and self control; perspective taking; communicating; making connections; critical thinking; taking on challenges and pursuing ongoing learning. And all of these skills require a key element: your time.

For example, to develop perspective taking, you can ask your children to think about perspectives of characters in books you read to them, Galinsky says. Why did they act that way? What were they thinking? This is more involved than cracking a book after a long day at work.  It requires mom and dad to engage the book the same way their kids do.

Galinsky’s ideas are resonating around the country. One New York Times review said: “It may well be the next iconic parenting manual, up there with Spock and Leach and Brazelton…”

“Mind in the Making” is not simply a book full of excellent parenting lessons, though, it’s a campaign.  Galinsky is traveling around the country conducting a conversation about early learning, education and family-work balance. She also is sharing key research from her book in videos.  (Check out the website for links.)

My brother is gone now, taken far too early by cancer. But, I think his parenting ideas are still around, including in the pages of Galinsky’s new book.

Check it out.

The State of Preschool 2009 has a lot of important findings, including states that are leading in quality early learning – Oklahoma’s universal access to pre-kindergarten makes it number one - and those that are trailing far behind.

After Oklahoma, Arkansas, West Virginia, New Jersey, Maryland, Georgia, North Carolina, Illinois, Louisiana and Tennessee rounded out the top ten, according to the report from the National Institute for Early Education Research.

California, Texas, and Florida didn’t rank nearly as well – failing to achieve most of the quality benchmarks set out in the report. This is a problem because these three states are among the four with the largest number of children, according to the report.

Washington did well – its 33rd ranking for access to pre-k for four-year-old children was the state’s major flaw – and was among only nine states to meet nine of the report’s ten quality standards, according to Washington’s Department of Early Learning.

Even though Washington’s state spending per child dropped slightly to $6,890, it was the fourth highest level in the last eight years, which isn’t bad given the deep recession. (The dollar figures are adjusted for inflation.)

Find Work-Life Rhythm Not Balance: Parents are busy these days, but I recommend moms and dads take five minutes to read the new column on The Juggle, Living a Full Life By Embracing the Chaos.

I have maintained work-life balance is a crock, and that instead young families should try to strike a rhythm in their daily lives, which are defined by the spikes that stomach bugs, sports teams and work deadlines always bring.

“I am juggling family, a job and a personally fulfilling but time-demanding side project. Which is to say, I am doing what my mom asked of me. I am living a full life.” – Wall Street Journal, 5/5/10.

Check it out.

Three of the nation’s leading experts on the struggles of managing family and work talked today about what kids really think of their working parents, and it seems they think we are stressed.

Families & Work Institute head Ellen Galinsky, parenting expert and author Joshua Coleman and New York Times parenting blogger Lisa Belkin tackled this topic on a radio show this morning.

Their talk reminds us that the chaos of the work-family balancing act is also a critical element of early learning, though it doesn’t always get a lot of attention. While researchers, advocates and parents correctly focus on what defines a good early education, efforts to build a quality system should also focus on parents.

Now, I am too busy trying to manage my own work and family to listen to this program, but the tweets are striking:

“If they had one wish, kids would want parents to be LESS STRESSED.” – @FWINews

“Kids think parents don't like our work very much.” – @RisingMom.

(Check out all the Twitter comments at #fem2.0. You can listen to a recording of the show or other shows in the series here.)

This show is only the latest in a month-long series that ended today about issues facing working families, everything from “Superman versus Family Man” to “Work Policies and Single Women.”

Breaking Science News: While it’s not surprising, researchers offered examples of how moms help kids develop their brains, ScienceDaily reports in “Moms Influence How Children Develop Advanced Cognitive Functions.”

We know quality child care offers children a good start in school and life. But there is another sometimes overlooked benefit: good affordable care brings greater balance to working families.

Today quality early learning and work-life balance are inseparable thanks to the growing number of families with two parents in the rat race – two-income households jumped from 60 to 65 percent of families from 1986 to 2008 - struggling and now demanding top-quality care.

The connection was obvious this morning during an online dialogue hosted by Work and Family. The topic was the disconnect between the public perception of work and family and the reality, and it showcased an increasingly powerful coalition pushing for changes in work-life policies. What is interesting for early learning folks is that many of the comments were about demands for quality child care. (The transcript is available here.)

As I watched and joined the dialogue it struck me that there was a greater role for child care advocates, though I’m sure some were online, because they could accomplish a lot with these work-family lobbyists.

Work-family balance is a sprawling topic, covering everything from maternity leave to fitness. In the next two years, though, if they focused on improving child care they would address arguably the biggest obstacle working parents face to creating a more balanced family life.

Of course, the early learning community and work-life warriors already team up on issues, but this is a good time to work on their relationship. They have a sympathetic president and first lady in the White House and a Democratically-controlled Congress, creating an opportunity to recast the debate.

For example, one of today’s topics was the need for more top-quality child care at employers. Though it may sound expensive, this benefit doesn’t need to be a big-ticket item when seen through a lens of higher productivity and lower turnover.

With Congress back in session, what do you want to see out of this relationship? What are the top federal changes you would like these two groups to join forces on to create a more sane family life?