The Mystery of Inconsistent Kids Shoe Sizing in Australia Solved!
It’s that time again when your kid needs a new pair of shoes. Great, back to trolling the shops with grumpy kid in tow trying on endless pairs of shoes. Choosing the right shoe size for your kids should be straight forward. But, unfortunately, as us parents find out time and time again, it’s not that simple.
In Australia there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to standard shoe sizing for kids. Sounds crazy doesn’t it! Surely it can’t be that hard to create Australian kids shoe sizes that are consistent. So, to break the shoe shopping frustrations of every Aussie parent, we decided to create one!
But first, I want to quickly go through the why of correctly fitting your kids for shoes.
The importance of correctly fitted kids shoes
When it comes to kids shoes, I cannot stress the importance of getting the correct fit. As we all know kids are super active and love to engage in all sorts of physical activities. From climbing and jumping, to running and skipping their feet take a bit of a hammering.
From early on in a child’s development their feet are soft, flexible and the bones are not fully developed. If they wear shoes that don’t fit them properly, for example being too small, as your child grows health issues could occur. Such health issues range from bunions and calluses to more serious problems such as foot deformities. These can cause ongoing problems and effect your child well into adolescence or even adulthood.
Why there is no standard Australian kids shoe sizing?
In Australia there is currently no set standard for kids shoe sizing. As a result, different brands will size their shoes as they think best. All this does is leave us poor parents with the time consuming task of having the kids try shoes on every time they need a new pair. Oh how much easier life would be with a set size guide. Imagine the shoe size AU10 was 17.5cm in every brand of shoe. I can hear the cheers from here.
Unfortunately this isn’t going to be the case unless every brand agreed to follow suit and that would be costly. So, as we couldn’t use our persuasive powers to change the shoe sizes, we’ve come up with our own solution.
Ok, so what’s the solution?
We’ve come up with a super simple tool to help you quickly and accurately check your kids shoe size. It’s honestly as easy as 1, 2, 3.
- Measure your child’s foot (while standing and at the end of the day) in cm’s and mm’s. (Yes, another inconsistency in shoe measurements!). Find out how to measure correctly here.
- Add 1cm (10mm) for growth.
- The two figures together will give you your child’s shoe size.
Your child’s foot measurement will be the same no matter what brand of shoes you buy! All you do is match the cm’s, not the size. Click here to download our free simple size guide today.
