How long to wear soft soled shoes?

[Ferrum]

Originally Posted by jam's mum I have a silly question - I don't really know anything about kids' shoes and my daughter wears ordinary shoes now, which I'm now thinking was a bad idea? But what about shock absorbency? Is it a red herring? Is shock absorbency not really necessary? We do live in a city, so she's walking on paved surfaces most of the time...

I bought into the shock absorbancy thing in the 90s & 00s also, but the new rationale is like another poster already said, our feet, ankles & knees were made to handle it. Think about a cat. Does it need shock absorbers to jump and land? Also, another analogy, older folks are actually encouraged to do some weight lifting/weight bearing activity as bones will re-mineralize more if "stressed". You lose it if you don't use it.

But I use this thinking within reason. The water shoes I put on DS when we go on his trike is probably not the most flexible, and he prefers his leather booties. But I put it on him only once a week and for a short duration. It's to protect his feet from being jammed in the wheel or when he drags it over the paved road.

[lizgrace07]

Originally Posted by gigismomma For those of you with older toddlers/young children, how do you wear soft soled shoes in the winter? We have slush here most of the year, soft soles just wouldn't hold up (or keep their feet dry), and I can't carry them everywhere. We wear boots for heavy snow, but 90% of the time just wear flexible soled shoes.

To me soft soled does not necessarily mean only thin leather soles. We have boots that I consider soft soled but they are fine in all sorts of weather. Our ones from soft star are great and my kids wear them in rain/slush/snow. My 4yo loves cowboy stuff so he wears Livie & Luca's cowboy style boots as his regular shoes. They are very flexible and while I wouldn't have him wear them in the snow or anything they certainly keep his feet plenty dry walking on a wet sidewalk or something.

http://www.livieandluca.com/shopboy.html
http://www.softstarshoes.com/kid-sho...chocolate.html

[jessicanashville]

I wear soft soled shoes at 31 My kids wear extremely flexible soled shoes outdoors and go barefoot indoors. I know there are people who think differently about them then I do...a girlfriend of mine totally believes (because she was told) that her daughter is so clumsy because she didn't use a solid sole shoe on her. So her son was put right in shoes as soon as he could walk and she said he is not clumsy at all. It wasn't convincing to me.