Going to a shoe shop with your kid to buy shoes doesn’t seem that much difficult. However, in this pandemic, we have found ourselves ordering all our stuff online. Now, if you have a kid and you have to buy shoes from any online store. The first hassle will be to find out the size of their feet. If you have never bought shoes from the shop for your kid, it can be quite confusing to determine the size. However, you need not worry about it as there are plenty of ways to measure the feet.
Measuring With Scale And Paper
You can measure your child’s feet with just paper and scale. All you have to do is ask your kid to stand straight against a wall. Make sure they are standing upright, and the weight is evenly distributed on both feet. Draw a line from the middle of a blank page. Place this page under the feet. The heels should be touching the wall. Mark the spot where the longest toe is meeting the line.
Once you are over with your markings, take a scale in centimeters and measure from the end of the page, where the heel was placed till the mark. Now you can check the size of the shoes and go for them. For playing it safe, you can go for a few centimeters longer. As a precaution, you can also measure their feet with their socks on. This will help you if you are buying shoes with which they would have to put socks on.
Using Charts
Since almost everything is available on the internet these days, you can download certain size charts. You can also check them out here. Just download and print out the chart and make your kid stand upright against the wall. Ask them to place their feet above the chart and mark the place. This would give you a better idea than just marking with a pen and using a scale to measure the length.
Certain shopping sites even provide a chart of their own. You can check them out for yourself and find out the appropriate measurements of the feet.
Using Measuring Gauges
This is probably one of the easiest ways to measure your kids’ feet. There are two types of gauges. One of them is the plastic gauge which is the common measuring tape available in any household. Make your child sit comfortably on a chair, and ask them to stick out their foot. Wrap the gauge around their feet and check for the measurements. Make sure the gauge is snugly tight around the foot. You can also find specific feet gauges to measure the feet. There are special gauges for toddlers and teenagers too.
Another type of gauge is the Paper Guage. This usually comes along with the charts. If you have a look at the charts, you will find the gauge attached beside. This gauge is to make sure that the measurements are accurate. It also helps to measure the width of the feet. Just cut out the gauge from the chart, wrap it around the feet, and determine the measurements. If you see that it comes between two sizes, you can go for the bigger size.
Gauges are much more helpful while you measure the feet with socks on. This would ensure that you get the most accurate measurement and the shoes fit properly with the socks on.
Measuring The Width
Now, this could be something that you weren’t considering much about. However, this is an important part of measuring the kids’ feet. As you measure the feet with the help of the chart, make sure to notice that the width is within the chart’s sizes. Sometimes, you might not notice, but your kid could have wide feet.
Also, you can use the measuring gauges to check out the width properly. You have to make sure that the child wouldn’t feel uncomfortable in the shoes. Hence, if you are searching for charts, make sure that you get one for wide feet. This would help you to under the measurements even.
An Important Thing To Keep In Mind
Now that you have in-depth knowledge and are equipped with various methods to measure your kids’ feet, there is another thing that you have to keep in mind. Your child’s feet grow in spurts. This means that they would outgrow their shoes quite rapidly. So does that mean you should buy bigger shoes? You can go for a size bigger but not two-three sizes bigger because that increases their chances of having a walking problem, and they might be more prone to falling off. Also, wearing proper-fitting shoes would make sure that your kid will have properly shaped feet.
You can keep measuring your kids’ feet every two months. This would help you be updated with the size and keep you aware of the time when you have to get new shoes for your kids. If your kid is between the age of 0-2, then it will grow at a rate of 2cm per year. If they are between the age of 2-5 years, their feet will grow at a rate of 1.5cm per year. Lastly, at the age of 6-11, their feet grow at the rate of 1cm per year. Hence, during the toddler stage, you need to keep checking on their sizes. Therefore, it is advised to keep the charts or the gauges handy as they will be used a lot.
Founder and a 36-year old mother of one who has gone through the usual problems of parenting herself and shares her own experiences through this blog. Ruby is a great writer who researches well before putting forth facts in the articles.