3 reasons to ditch your kids' traditional shoes right now

Luckily, 95% of babies are born with perfect feet. Tiny, malleable utterly adorable pieces of awesome bio-mechanical engineering that have the potential to one day grow and reach anywhere - climb anything!


So what happens? Traditional shoes happen.


Here is what happens to feet when they are stuffed into spaces that stop their little feet from developing naturally (which is most conventional shoes):



  1. PADDING - dulls the senses in kids’ growing brains



Padded soles dull the sensory feedback our brains get from our feet. And when our feet have over 200,000 neurotransmitters – the same as our hands – this makes NO SENSE at all!

The more sensory messages growing brains get from their feet and bodies the better: bodies and brains grow stronger and smarter.


  1. STIFF SHOES - wreck the form and function of kids’ feet




The bones in kids’ feet are malleable until their late teens. Hard, rigid shoes act like a MINI-CAST: weakening tendons and muscles throughout childhood when they should be growing in strength and flexibility. Same goes with ‘arch support’ and orthotics – weakening rather than letting small feet grow strong.

Like the ancient proverbs say: ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ and ‘use it or lose it!’


  1. NARROW SHOES – squash Big Toe into Lame Toe


Traditional shoes as we know them today were created a couple of hundred years ago for riding horses, with a heel and narrow toe-box to fit in a stirrup. Narrow shoes squash feet and toes together so the foot cannot splay and recoil properly.

Bare feet grow naturally wider, with a strong Big Toe separated from the rest of the foot. A squashed Big Toe that’s tilted at an angle decreases it’s potential, making the whole body lose functional movement, balance and posture.


At VivoKids we believe barefoot is best, but we get it isn’t always practical. So we create sustainable shoes with a heap of love to be barely-there: protecting only from climate and terrain while removing all the stiffness, padding and narrowness that just wrecks kids’ feet. Our shoes are THIN, BENDY and WIDE so your kids’ feet grow strong and flexible for skilful and balanced movement. As if they were running around barefoot all day.


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