Why Are Soft Shoe Soles Good for a Baby?

High white shoes with hard soles -- the kind your grandparents might have had bronzed -- are best left decorating bookends. Today's babies wear shoes with soft, flexible soles for a good reason: they're better for your baby's feet. If grandma wants to know why you're putting such flimsy shoes on your baby, you can tell her that baby's feet develop more normally when they're not encased in rigid leather.

  1. Protection

    • For a non-walker, shoes have one purpose: to keep their feet warm when they are outside. When inside the house, your baby doesn't need any shoes at all, whether he's crawling or a brand-new toddler. If it is cool in the house, cover those little tootsies with socks or shoes that are soft and pliable won't force his foot into unnatural positions, squish his toes, or provide a slick surface that could cause tumbles. Your baby should have a finger's width of length between the end of his longest toe and the shoe.

    Support

    • In grandma's day, baby shoes were supposedly engineered to help a baby stand by bracing his ankles. But babies don't need stiff soles and hard material around their ankles to help them stand up. The main advantage to high-topped shoes for new walkers is that they stay on your baby's foot better than low-cut shoes. But choose soft materials, like canvas, rather than hard leather.

    Corrective Shoes

    • A baby with normal foot development doesn't need shoes that supposedly prevent toeing in or bow legs. Babies also don't need shoes that support their arches; 97 percent of babies under age 18 months have flat feet, due to the fat pad under their foot, the Canadian Community Paediatrics Community reports in the September-October issue of "Paediatrics and Child Health." By age 10, only 4 percent of children still have flat feet. If a shoe bends at the ball of the foot, it has an arch, which your baby doesn't need. Choose a choose that bends in the middle instead, pediatrician Dr. Natasha Burgert suggests on her website, KC Kids Doc.

    Choosing Shoes

    • Hard-soled shoes can hinder a new walker's effort. Hard soles are often slippery; since the soles won't bend at your baby's natural bend in the foot, hard soles can throw off his gait, making it harder to walk. Sneakers cause the opposite problem; they're more bendable, but the rubber on the bottom can stick to the floor and trip your baby. Not all soft-soled shoes work well for babies learning to walk; plastic shoes can have the same effect as sneakers. If you use shoes at all for your baby, choose soft, pliable leather until he has been walking for a few months, the Community Paediatrics Committee recommends.

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