If your garage is anything like mine, when the heavens decide to open, you are in a mad panic to find the kids’ wellies! If after rooting around you actually manage to find a matching pair, the chances are that when your child finally tries them on, they’re often at least one size too small for them. So, I began to wonder whether having correctly fitting wellies for kids was as critical as shoes and trainers for kids?
Wellies are worn when the child is doing some form of physical activity. This can be from walking to running and climbing. As a result the foot will be under a lot of pressure. If you have ever worn tight-fitting shoes yourself whilst walking, you will soon discover that your foot swells from the pressure and heat that they’re under. As they swell and sweat, areas like the little toes and back of the heel start to catch the shoe and quickly go red. After an hour a blister can easily be formed. Within a few hours this blister can grow and get deeper causing it to bleed and potentially scar. The same thing can happen to a childs’ foot in a wellie that is too small. In fact as a child’s foot is softer and chubbier, these sores and blisters can appear far quicker than in our own older, tougher feet.
As well as blisters occurring after a single play, wearing small wellies over a prolonged period of time can cause the feet to bend and adjust their shape to adapt to their confinement. This can lead to hammer toes and mis-shaping of the foot at the joint which can be painful.
It is therefore safe to say that putting your child in wellies that are too small for ANY length of time can be bad and painful experience for your child. So how can you be better prepared for that sudden downpour?
Should you simply buy a size bigger to allow for this growth and being ‘caught out’? It’s very tempting, but no. Just as wearing a wellie that is too small is bad for the foot, so too it wearing one that is too big. Wellies that are bought a size bigger can easily ‘slip’ at the back of the foot or ankle as a child walks. There is even greater risk when the child is running. To help them stay on, a child will ‘claw’ their toes to grip the boot on. If worn over a long walk this can tire the foot and they will begin to ache. Blisters can also arise by this movement in the boot and the foot catching and rubbing.
It’s easy to say so, but try to be prepared! Every time your child gets measured and moves up a shoe size, double-check that all their other items of footwear are also in this new size. Most of us think about school shoes, weekend shoes and trainers, but most of us forget items like wellies, slippers and school pumps. These styles are also relatively inexpensive compared to these other items of footwear, so don’t cut corners. Every time your child goes up that size, create a checklist to check that all their footwear, including those wellies buried in the garage are the correct new size. As well as reducing that pile of old redundant wellies, you will also have a lucky child that has never experienced the pain of a blister or worse!
Wellies for kids can easily be bought at supermarkets whilst doing your food shop, but often they can use inferior materials or poor fitting lasts (the moulds used to create the shape of the wellie in manufacturing), so for a greater range check out what’s available on the web. As well as offering more choice, better quality sites will offer advice on how the wellies actually fit, so you can ensure you’re purchasing the best wellies for your child’s feet.