3 Things You Need To Know About Your Child's Feet
As a Podiatrist, I see many children each week who suffer from foot or leg pain that causes them to miss out on sports and their normal activities.
Even my own children have experienced foot and leg pain from time to time that really made them stop enjoying being kids. Your children's feet are vitally important to their normal, healthy development.
Without healthy feet, children are not free to grow and develop or run and explore the world around them.
Remember your childrens feet - are their feet for life
There are 3 three things you need to know about your children’s feet.
1. Their feet are for life
The feet your children start out with are the feet they will have for the rest of their lives.
How we treat our children’s feet now will directly affect them in the future.
The wrong sorts of shoes, abnormal stress on developing bones and ligaments and poor movement patterns or mucsle weakness can all cause changes in your children's feet that will stay with them for life.
2. Their feet are constantly changing
Children’s feet, like the rest of them, are constantly changing and developing.
During childhood, your child’s bones are quite ‘plastic’ as they need to change and grow.
What this means is that any abnormal stress from poor function, abnormal walking and even the wrong shoes can cause deformity of the important foot bones to occur.
You need to protect our children’s feet now to ensure they develop as normally as they can and with few chances of foot problems occuring as they age.
Foot pain for a child is not normal
3. Foot pain is not normal
Pain should not be a normal part of anyone’s life, let alone a child’s life.
Pain is your brain’s way of telling you that something is wrong in your body and you need to pay attention to it.
When we experience pain, it means your brain has collected all the information it can and determined the area in pain is a risk to our continued survival. It is the way we have evolved to make sure we can stay safe and live a full life.
When your child experiences foot or leg pain, it should be checked by your Podiatrist.
Early Help Stops Problems Fast
When foot and leg pain continues for a long time, children tend to develop ways to keep going despite their problem.
Unfortunately this often means other parts of their bodies need to do much more work than they should and it can be common to start seeing compensations occur in different parts of the body.
It is quite common to see children who experience foot and leg problems then start to complain of knee, hip and back problems.
Early intervention helps to prevent this escalation of pain.
So, remember these three things and help your child get the best start they can in life.
I'm so confident I can help your children’s foot and leg problems that I'd love to chat with you personally!
Contact us on 8330 0004 or Book Online
I would love to talk to you about how we can help you build an amazing life from the feet up.
Anthony Robinson
Director of Complete Podiatry