When a child is in tune with the surface they walk on, they learn balance faster and more naturally. We all use our toes to help balance our body's complete weight on the ball and heel of our foot evenly. Stiff, hard-soled shoes don't allow this, instead imparting a false sense of balance to a child resulting in more stumbling, spills, and falls.
When the ball and heel of the foot are allowed to evenly distribute the body's weight on the ground, it promotes over all good balance and strength for a lifetime, something that hard-soled shoes hinder. It is now known that the belief that babies need hard-soled baby booties or stiff shoes for support to learn to walk is a fallacy. In fact, they can damage the foot arch in a growing foot, causing problems with proper development, leading to a life of possible chronic foot, knee and back pain.
Well-known podiatrist Dr. Simon J. Wikler advocates going barefoot for better foot health, especially for children. In his book Take Off Your Shoes and Walk, he explains how hard-soled shoes often deform and distort our feet. Walking barefoot or in the next-best thing, a pair of soft-soled Bupbas, a child's developing toes get a better grip on the surface providing stability and balance. This, in turn, helps to develop and improve overall foot strength.
The Canadian Paedriatric Society recommends soft-soled shoes for protection when going barefoot is not an option during the early years of foot development.
Though going barefoot is optimal, it often just isn't practical. On cold floors and rough surfaces, or with a toddler who wants to walk down the grocery aisle, tender toes need protection, and that is where Bupbas come into play.
