Shoe trickery
G is a growing boy. Yes, this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, but apparently I’m living in denial (or forgetfulness) when it comes to his feet. G outgrew his size 4 shoes and came home from daycare barefoot a few weeks ago. And guess what? We had nothing else to fit him that he would wear.
The key to this is ‘that he would wear’. You see, G hates, HATES hard soled shoes. Putting a hard sole on him might as well be putting shoes on a cat — he behaves about the same way. He stops whatever it was he was doing (before the shoes came on), squats, whines, and pulls at the shoes. Actually, a pretty great mechanism to get him to stay in one spot… provided you don’t mind the constant and pitiful “Whaaaaaaaaa!”s
So hard soles were out. Unfortunately, there aren’t all that many makers that make soft soled shoes in size 5, that also had material worthy of the adventures of a 19+ month-old. In addition, I’m not thrilled with the idea of having a 15 year old son who goes to school in ballet or Bunny slippers, because he doesn’t like the weight/inflexibility of tennis shoes.
Luckily for us Robeez’ 1st Step shoes are just perfect. It’s a hard-er sole, but with lots of flexibility. Now the trick was to get G to wear them. The first try didn’t go too well. However, we won on our second. What worked? Showing him the airplanes on his new shoes. Then he wanted to wear the “flies” on his feet. His second pair had soccer balls on the straps, so he was pretty excited about the balls on his feet too. Shoe trickery? Yes, but it’s a good path towards big boy shoes.
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