Some parents eagerly look for boots with orthopedic innersoles for their children. Unfortunately, even today we can come across inventors of these old-fashioned views, who sometimes use them for commercial reasons.
Ever and again the media present information about an appalling condition of Polish children's feet - for example, over 80% of children have faulty posture and feet defects. However, no information is passed about the source of research or methods owing to which these results have been received. After a certain time, "wonderful boots" which will cure all children's feet irrespective of the kind of defect are introduced at the market. Here, we can recall the former boots "juniorki" (boots for juniors). In the seventies, they became "the school obligatory boots" by the ordinance of the minister of education. The "juniorki" were supposed to correct the lopsided position of the feet, but the boots were also worn by children who had the right built of their feet as well as by those who had pigeon-toed feet (pigeon-toed feet are as if "opposite" of valgity) and wearing such boots deepens this deformity.
From birth up to the age of about four, the child's feet contain variable fatty pads that cover the feet's anatomy (the biggest one is positioned on the medial side of the shank) and makes the impression of platypodia. Moreover, it cannot be forgotten that the child who starts walking puts the feet wide in order to increase so called quadrangle of prop and thereby to keep the body balance. This ballast of the legs put astride makes he muscle coordination of the feet highly difficult and unsatisfactory. If we add the fatty pad of the feet to that we will get the image of the apparent platypodia. This occurrence finally disappears at the age of 4 - 5.
According to the latest orthopedic research, it is unadvisable in case of right feet to use the insertion that props the oblong arch. The orthopedic insertion is applied in the process of correcting the feet and both its size and shape must fit individually the corrected feet - i.e. their size, proportion, kind of fault and the extent of the fault. The making of such an insertion should be recommended only by an orthopedist. This insertion cannot be used commonly in boots that come from mass production and that are sold in ordinary shoe shops.
All things considered, if your child's development is right, buy him/her boots without looking for orthopedic insertions. There are companies producing really good footwear in Poland - made of soft leather, with flexible soles and with properly high and wide tops.
The text was prepared by
Mgr Barbara Skrzyńska - anthropologist
of the Central Laboratory
of Shoe Manufacturing in Kraków
