My wonderful daycare provider made yet another suggestion to me (of course, well meaning) that I should buy my 12-mo-old daugher as of yesterday those hard white boots that my mother had me wear 30-something years ago. Of course, this is all they had back the. Today we have a vast amount of shoes available that new walkers can use, which was what I planned to do. Has anyone else used these boots?
K.
Hi K.,
When our son started to walk, we put him in the hard soled shoes. They were too heavy for him. It was suggested that we get soft soled shoes. At Stride Right, they have shoes for stages. Stage 1 non crawler, Stage 2 crawler/new walker and stage 3 for the walker. We found that they were more helpful for him to walk in and practice. (Warning, they are a bit pricey).
H.
Consider talking to a shoe store that sells Stride Rite shoes for children. Stride Rite actually makes 3 different stages of shoes, 1) crawling, 2) cruising (very flexible shoe), 3) walking (a little more supportive). Your little one deserves the best shoes you can afford for them. Their feet are developing and the right shoe will help in that process. Stride Rite is expensive, though, and at this young toddler age they are changing shoe size every 3 months, so it can really hurt the pocket book!
Softer shoe soles the first 3 years is recommended by podiatrist now. Robeez are good but even better are Pedipeds. Go to www.pedipeds.com. They have great choices and all the information regarding shoes for toddlers. My twins were in pedipeds until they were almost 2.5 yrs old.
Everything I have read says that babies feet need lots of freedom to grow and form naturally. They even go so far as to say barefoot is best. But since I am not sending my child to daycare barefoot every day I have looked for flexible shoes with some traction and protection on the bottom for walks down the street to the park. When my daughter was 12 months I loved the mary jane type shoes at Target. They were only $10 and they were soft with a simple strap but had rubber shapes on the bottom which provided more protection than something like Robeez. They come in a bunch of different colors and were really cute! Now that she is a little older I have switched to a pair of stride right sandals (got them on sale - whew! expensive!) and Sketchers sneakers (got them at Sears). The Sketchers were suggested by my daycare provider (I know - they have lots of advice!) and they actually turned out to be the nicest shoes I could find under $40! The price of kids shoes is incredible! I went though a bunch of different types of shoes and found that the hard soles shoes just made her trip and I try to avoid the thick soled shoes as well. Good luck.
Hi K.,
Our pediatrician actually told us the softer the better and whenever possible no shoes. That way your child learns to use their feet and toes for balance. We looked all over for softer soled shoes. We got our daughter some Puma's at Babies R Us. They have the most flexible sole we could find. They were a little more than I would like to spend on a toddlers shoe, but they are pretty durable.
The reason doctors recommended the solid white boots way back when, was to protect childrens ankles. They have found that the was the wrong thing to do since it was causing them to have weak ankles thus causing a lot of injuries. Anyway, goodluck.
