Our Five Most-Read Blog Posts of 2014

For almost three years now, we’ve been publishing our opinion and perspective on the reality, politics, research, and recent experiences in early childhood in the region of Latin America and the Caribbean as well as the rest of the world. Our number one goal is that, through you, the children of Latin America and the Caribbean receive the best care in order to have a brighter future.

If you’re a public policy manager in your country and you read our posts here on the First Steps Blog, we believe that we can contribute to your work in such a way that the children in your community grow up healthy and develop to their fullest potential.

If you’re a mom, dad, or adult in contact with children in your family or community and you read our posts, we also believe that we can help you get informed about the latest debates on best practices in child care and nutrition, in both home and school settings.

We greatly value the trust you place in us, and we consider the task of publishing posts about what’s best for the children of our region to be an important one.  And so, as a holiday gift, we’d like to share with you some of our most-read posts of 2014.

• “No One Is Born Knowing How to Parent…But It Can Be Learned!”: Patricia Jara reflects on the still-underutilized potential that parenting programs may have to strengthen child development in our region.
• “The Other Intelligence”: María Caridad Araujo explains how important it is to consider emotional intelligence in early childhood and how it could affect a child’s future performance.
• “A Pacifier for the New Millennium: The Smartphone”: Serrana Mujica presents studies and research that demonstrate the effects of smartphone use on small children.
• “More Than Words”: Florencia López Boo and Daniela Philipp talk about how exposing children between the ages of 0 to 3 to a rich and diverse language environment is important for their linguistic development and future performance.
• “Your Smartphone Addiction Could Be Harming Your Child’s Future”: Ángela Funez writes about the impact of excessive cell phone use on both parents and children.

We hope that you’ve enjoyed these posts. Please know that next year, as always, we’ll be publishing articles and updated information that are relevant to your family and community. Is there a particular topic that you’d like to read about? Let us know in the comments section below or on Twitter.