CHILDRENS SHOES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 40, 12 January 1949, Page 8

CHILDRENS SHOES

Should Be Roomy And Flexible (By the Department of Health) Until your children need to wear shoes, let them enjoy the natural development of their feet unhindered by footwear. While they are walking about the house or the garden, let them be barefooted as much as is reasonable. Their feet will be stronger and tougher for every hour they are not encased in shoes while outside the house. But what shoes the child does wear must be more than just something to cover the feet. Careless selection of footwear might, continued over a long period in growing childhood, ruin your child’s feet for life. It is essential that you should have regard to three cardinal rules in choosing your child’s shoes. v Firstly, children’s shoes must be flexible, toe to heel. Secondly, allow for frequent replacement of shoes, remembering that young feet want to grow quickly. Thirdly, the inner eugs of the shoe must be straight. TfiQ younger the- child, the more important is flexibility or ease of movement within the shoe. Judge this by grasping the, shoe firmly round the shank and see whether the toe will bend up and well back toward the heel. Secondly, do not expect a child to break in' a pair of ill-fitting shoes. Kiddies’ bones are soft and easily moulded. Claw toes, hammer toes, big toes twisted out of line, and similar defects begin in the years of rapid growth—if you let them.