Abstract
Before discussing ideal footwear for children, consider normal foot development. The alignment of a child’s foot and lower extremity changes in the early years. Sitting and crawling improves core strength, then they start to stand, cruise, walk, and finally run. Bones get longer and change shape. Due to the intrauterine position, newborns have a high arches, bowlegged limbs, and often in-toeing of the feet. Gravitational pull is strong enough to almost reverse this, and by age 4 children typically have a pronated foot and knock-kneed limbs. As activity increases, individual muscles get stronger. Due to continued gravitational pulls and the powerful developing muscles of children, this seemingly “malalignment” adjusts back to what would seem normal for an adult by the time they are 7–8 years old.
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Cucuzzella, M. (2017). Pediatric Footwear. In: Werd, M., Knight, E., Langer, P. (eds) Athletic Footwear and Orthoses in Sports Medicine. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52136-7_33
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52136-7_33
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