22 Nov Wondering when you should be getting shoes for your baby

Not sure what’s the best type of shoes for your baby

Here at My Favourite Physio, our Expert Paediatric Physiotherapists see many babies and toddler to help them learn to walk and often parents believe that keeping their little ones bare feet helps to strengthen the foot muscle to learn to walk.

However, for some babies who have low muscle tone, or tend to roll their ankles in to stand on the inner border of their feet or turns their feet in to stand pigeon toed, having a pair of good shoes actually provides support to baby’s ankles and corrects their feet position to allow baby to learn to walk. In fact, our Expert Paediatric Physiotherapists, after carrying out a thorough assessment on each baby, would often recommend supportive shoes at the stage when baby has learnt to move from sitting to crawling and is crawling efficiently. This is because without good supportive shoes baby is not able to learn to pull to stand to learn to walk.

Here are the guidelines to help you pick good shoes for your baby:

1. Good shoes are flexible and bend in the front third of the shoe to allow baby to push through the front of their feet. To test shoe flexibility, hold the shoe between your fingers and thumb lengthwise and squeeze gently, if the shoe bends in the front third of the sole easily then it is flexible enough for baby to push off.

2. Good shoes have a good heel counter to provide support to the ankle and holds baby’s ankle in a neutral position. To check, look at baby’s feet from behind with baby in standing, you should be able to draw a straight line from the knee joint to the heel. Baby’s ankles should not roll in or out when in the shoes.

3. Good shoes have arches supports to correct the in-rolling of the ankles or in- turning of the feet. To check, you should be able to feel a hump in the inner border of the insole.

To help families with picking a suitable pair of shoes for their baby, My Favourite Physio has partnered with a shoe supplier to provide good supportive shoes. To find out more, ring My Favourite Physio on (02) 9790 4233 today!