After six years in the business of selling children’s clothing and shoes, I feel like I might have a few words of wisdom for people out there with regards to their kids’ tender tootsies. I am NOT a podiatrist, a paediatrician or in any other sense of the word a trained expert in this department, but I do have a few years’ experience of fitting various shapes of feet. Feel free to leave your own comments!
As a child, I whined constantly when I had to accompany my mother on shopping trips, or had to walk more than a few blocks really. My mother’s patience wore thinner and thinner, until finally, one day when I was in Grade 3, she took me to a really good shoe store. (It’s still there – and can be found here next time you’re in Vancouver). Lo and behold, we discovered I had flat feet! There was a perfectly good explanation for all that whining – my feet did actually hurt. At the time, arch supports were not common occurrences in shoes, so we had to buy an expensive pair of Nikes (blue with a yellow swoosh – so cool) with a separate arch support. Gradually, over time, my feet pretty much corrected themselves and I can now happily wear a pair of Chuck Taylors all day long without whining even a little bit.
What does this have to do with your kids? It has to do with the idea that kids’ feet are growing and developing at a completely different rate from the rest of their bodies, and should be paid attention to. When your child was born, she had more bones in her feet than she does now at the age of 2. As she was growing, those bones were knitting together – if you had put her in those hard, solid shoes that my generation had to wear, her feet would have molded to those shoes – and so the current thinking is that “barefoot is best”. Unless there is a real physical problem (Down’s syndrome and club foot are two examples), babies are best left barefoot or else in soft-soled shoes such as Jack & Lily, Smaller, baby Converse or Tip Toey Joey’s.
Once your baby is walking, you still want him in a soft-soled shoe, at least for the first little while. We like See Kai Run, as they make a wide shoe with plenty of room in the toe box. Once he’s a fully established walker (or runner!), you can put him in pretty much whatever you like, as long as there is enough – but not too much – room in the toe box. 1/2 to 1 cm is all the room you want, and check this when he’s standing up, with all his weight on his feet. You should be checking your child’s shoes every few months, especially before he’s talking and complaining about how much his shoes hurt! If you live in a northern clime, be fully prepared to buy shoes 1 or even 2 sizes up once you get those winter boots off – and don’t feel bad if you suddenly realize your child’s been jamming their feet into their shoes! It’s a pretty common occurrence.
Shoe manufacturers, like clothing manufacturers, do not have a standardized guideline to follow. I’m sure you’re aware of this when you buy your own shoes – it’s not any different in kid-land. That said, we can give you a rough idea of the sizing issues we find in the shoes on the website.
- See Kai Run: fit wide feet really well. They are generally too wide for kids with skinny feet, and we have trouble on occasion trying to fit in kids with fat (from the bottom to the top of their feet) feet, as the openings aren’t always big enough.
- etnies: in little kids, brilliant actually. Especially those kids with fat feet (see above). The RVM toddler shoe is astonishingly flexible for a skate shoe, and we LOVE their “grow with me” program.
- Geox: great for kids with narrow feet. If you look at your child’s feet and realize that they don’t seem to narrow at any point, from heel to toe, Geox may not be for them. These are great shoes, don’t get me wrong, but they don’t fit every foot.
- DC: in general, well-fitting. We find the “Pure” styles to be bigger fitting than any of the other styles. Skate shoes generally have a very stiff sole – which makes sense for the sport.
- Converse: if you’re looking at a Chuck Taylor, they are roughly 1/2 size up from your regular size. So if your daughter is a size 8, she will fit the size 7.5 (or even 7) perfectly.
If I had to give you a take-home message, it would be this: if you have to cheap out somewhere, do it in your children’s clothes, but don’t do it in their shoes (although of course, we don’t want you to do it in their clothes either!). Check often on their sizing and buy the best quality shoes you can afford – it’s better for your kid’s feet, better for the environment (all of my kids’ shoes get handed down or donated) and at the end of the day, better for your wallet as 1 or 2 (or 3 if you like shoes as much as I do) pairs of well-built shoes will be cheaper than repeatedly buying terrible-quality ones at a cheap price.
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