2007). Further, if child care hours increased between three and 54 months (4 1/2) years, their vocabulary scores are lowered by the time they reach 5th grade (Belsky et al., 2007). This suggests that long-term child care use has important implications not only on children's socio-emotional functioning but on academic achievement as well.

Knowing this, it becomes more evident that parents cannot overlook the importance of choosing high quality child care if only to moderate the effects of long-term child care use.

Earlier, it was mentioned that high-quality child care is a predictor of positive pre-academic skills. Follow-up studies on the same children show that this is a potentially enduring effect; all other factors being equal, their vocabulary scores were consistently higher through the 5th and 6th grades than children who did not attend child care (Belsky et al., 2007). This again shows that children's early experience is critical to...
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