Your child's feet are very important to us! Babies feet grow very rapidly during the first two to three years.  Starting at 6 months and up to age 2 (2 1/2 for some children) their feet can grow up to a full size every 3 months.  It is important to have your child's feet measured every 2-3 months in order to properly monitor this rapid grown and to make sure that their shoes still fit properly.  Babies and toddlers have a tendency to curl up their toes especially if their shoes are getting tight, so feeling for their toes through the shoe is not always an accurate way to assess fit.  From 2 1/2 on children's feet will grow in spurts of up to 1/2 a size approximately every 6 months.

Did you know that the average person takes 8,000 to 10,000 steps per day.  That's equivalent to a combined total of about 5 miles of walking accumulated through the day, or about 115,000 miles in a lifetime.  That's more than four times the circumference of the earth, or a distance nearly half way from the earth to the moon.  

Your feet mirror your general health. Conditions such as arthritis, diabetes, nerve and circulatory disorders can show their initial symptoms in the feet - so foot ailments can be your first sign of more serious medical problems.

Babies do not have sweat glands like adults and only sweat from their heads and their feet. Baby feet exert a lot of energy, when standing and balancing. This causes baby feet to get very hot. Baby feet can sweat up to twice the amount of adult feet. This make selecting a shoe, made of natural leather or other breathable materials, very important.

1/4 of all the bones in the human body are down in your feet making foot development very important!  There is very little hard bone in a baby's foot at birth and their foot is mostly soft cartilage.  By the time your child is school age, their feet will have developed 45 bones and then over the next 13-14 years, their feet will continue to develop and some of the bones of the foot will fuse together to create the 26 bones that make up the adult foot. Feet that are mostly cartilage with little hard bone make a child's foot delicate and vulnerable to the pressure of ill fitting shoes, especially in the early years of growth. The lack of bone means that a child is unlikely to complain about an ill fitting shoe, simply because he or she will not feel sufficiently uncomfortable.  Children's feet are developing during the first 20 years of their life so it is essential to ensure that their shoes offer the propper fit and support as this will form the foundation for the rest of their life. 

One size is 1/3 of an inch and 1/2 a size is 1/6 of and inch.  That is the same regardless of the size infant, child, youth or adult.  A shoe that fits properly will allow the foot to sit so that the widest part of the foot is in the widest part of the shoe.   This allows the foot to bend where the shoe was constructed to bend.  There needs to be some space at the toe but a shoe that is too big will be uncomfortable and will not function properly.  If you are tempted to upsize your child's shoes, remember that if you were to put on a shoe that was a size too big, that is the same amount of extra room that your child will have if their shoes are a size too big.