The Washington Department of Early Learning made a move today towards creating a voluntary statewide quality rating and improvement system (QRIS) for child care – it has been a field test – by announcing 65 early adopters of the system.

“We are now moving toward a voluntary statewide system that includes ratings for parents. And we are partnering with the state child care resource & referral network (for the improvement part of QRIS) and University of Washington (for the rating part of QRIS), similar to the structure (of) many other states,” DEL’s Government and Community Relations Manager, Amy Blondin, wrote in an email.

The move to an early adopter phase means the rating system now has final standards. During this phase, the agency also will prioritize “providers who care for infants and toddlers, and those who offer scholarships/sliding fee scales or care for subsidized children. Both are critical needs in our state,” Blondin added.

The early adopters are in Clark, Kitsap and Spokane counties, and the White Center and East Yakima regions. These providers will have access to coaching, scholarships, training and incentives.

Reading Babies’ Behavioral Language:  Babies communicate in many ways and “listening” to their behavioral language can help them develop coping strategies for stressful situations, Ellen Galinsky writes today on The Huffington Post.

The author of “Mind in the Making” describes how premature babies were treated and how nurses and doctors learned to interpret their behavior to help them adjust to their care.

For example, if the baby's hands splay out, give the baby something to hold onto. If the baby is squirming under the bright lights, make the lighting softer. If the baby is getting agitated, hold the baby until his or her breathing becomes more stable. After documenting and recording behavior, they launched into a study where the nurses "read" and then responded to the baby's behavior in ways that built on that baby's coping strategies, and thus gave the baby more control.

The results of this experiment were impressive. There was reduced severity of chronic lung disease in these premature babies, improved brain functioning, improved growth and earlier release from the hospital. In addition, their care was significantly less costly.

Here's the lesson I take from this. Children, even those as young as premature infants, are less prone to the harmful effects of stress when they are supported in managing their own stress by being helped to use the strategies they have for coping and for calming down. – “Helping Children to Learn to Take on Challenge.” 8/16/11.