Some time ago we already explained to you what the possible reasons were for children to take off their shoes so often. Despite this, parents many times we insist on putting on your shoes, even when they don't need them, because they don't walk.
We knew how comfortable and happy the children are exploring their bare feet. Now, a study indicates that the habit of precociously fitting babies and children can negatively affect their development and that, on the contrary, Barefoot children develop their intelligence better:
Currently there is a tendency to fit children early. There are shoes called footwear for preandantes and footwear for crawling. This article aims to offer scientific arguments that justify the need to leave barefoot the feet of non-walking babies. As a method, the analysis and critical reading of different bibliographic sources in relation to the psychomotor development of the child, neurology treatises and the main theories on the development of intelligence in the child have been used. We find that the physical movement and sensory stimulation of the baby through the bare feet is a factor of acceleration of maturation, proprioceptive development and intellectual development of the child.
In Babies and more Children better barefoot: calm, they will not catch a cold for itThus begins the study, entitled "Preventive podiatry: barefoot children equal to smarter children“, Prepared by Isabel Gentil García, Professor at the University School of Nursing, Physiotherapy and Podiatry of the Complutense University of Madrid.
In it, a criticism is made of the profusion of advertising and trade in footwear for “preandantes”, as well as the excessive pediatric recommendation to wear babies. In his opinion, this act should only be necessary in order to shelter the feet, and as a demonstration it offers scientific arguments that justify the need to leave the feet of non-walking babies barefoot, through an interdisciplinary approach.
Why baby's feet are so important
From the point of view of neurological development and tactile sensitivity, the feet of the newborn have a much finer sensitivity than that of the hand until eight or nine months.
Therefore in the first months the feet have an essential function: Inform the outside world to the baby, who touches with them everything he has at his disposal, manipulates them with his hands and takes them to the mouth where the sensitive nerve endings are greater. From this age the foot gradually loses this kind of sensitivity.
The fact of continually shifting babies who do not walk deprives them of tactile information and the perception of the position and movement of the feet in relation to space, which play an important role in the central nervous system. Therefore, for the maturation of motor skills, the development of manual visual coordination and the acquisition of this tactile and perceptual information are necessary.
The study is also based on the Piaget stages of intelligence development, focusing on the first, on the sensomotor stage (from birth to two years), when manipulation, movement and learn to organize skillfully are important sensory information. The first notion of self, space, time and the idea of causality is acquired.
No doubt the feet, as privileged receivers, they would contribute to a better development of baby intelligence, and this is so because intelligence is developed by:
- The maturation of the nervous system, this is the ability to differentiate and discriminate increasingly a greater number of stimuli and has to do with the differentiation of nerve cells.
- The experience of interaction with the physical world, this is manipulation, the handling of objects. It means knowing how objects work by manipulating with them. The development of intelligence would not be possible without this manipulation, since the maturation of the nervous system is not independent of experience. Next to the hands and mouth, the feet also play a fundamental role.
- The need to learn. The human mind tends to cognitive balance. Every time there is an external stimulus that we do not understand, we tend to understand. The cognitive system tends to look for new information to rebalance, so the interest in learning has to do with finding increasingly complex and stable knowledge structures.
In Babies and more, to class without shoes! Barefoot children learn more and better In addition to Piaget, the author focuses on other authors to demonstrate her theory, and in the end everyone agrees that development is the result of a complex interaction between the environment and the organism and that one of the environmental factors that is most involved in its development It is the body itself and its self-knowledge.
One of the funniest images we discovered of the baby about three months ago is that he looks and touches his hands and feet with curiosity. Start discovering your body, and shoes largely detract from sensitivity, movement... From six to seven months, babies usually put their feet in their mouths in this process of self-knowledge and bringing new sensations and motor experiences that contribute to the development of their intelligence.
In addition, supporting the barefoot on all types of surfaces, also irregular, contributes to muscle development. Footwear called preandante or footwear for crawling prevents sensations, also adds excessive weight to the feet preventing them from moving freely. All this explains why children, when they have more control of their body, take off their shoes continuously.
Some socks would be worth it so that they were not cold, although if babies usually put their feet in their mouths they are not convenient, and they still learn very quickly to take them off too. And, as I said a long time ago, I consider that baby shoes are very nice but not very useful, my daughters really took them little, also for the price issue: they are probably the most expensive clothes in relation to their size.
In short, the study concludes that putting on the little ones when they still don't know how to walk can harm their development, and that those “pre-elementary” shoes have no justification. This seems like a new reason to let the children, if it's not cold, go barefoot at home, although it was enough to see how comfortable and happy they were exploring the feet, don't you think?
