Saturday, May 16, 2009

BAN THE VELCRO?


I remember shocking my kids by telling them I had to learn to tie shoe laces at the age of 4 or I couldn't have gone to school. Why didn't you use velcro shoes? they asked. They looked at me as if I was from the cretaceous period when I mentioned there were no velcro shoes in 1972. Of course my kids went on to learn laces around 5 anyway but I am amazed that some kids in Charlotte's class are only learning now! I don't have a problem with schoolage kids' shoes being velcro as it speeds them up at home time. I can even cope with velcro for nursery kids for the same reason. What I really want banned is velcro for first walkers. Anna has some Clarks Doodles. All my kids have had Clarks Doodles and until last summer they had little metal buckles which were just great. This year they have velcro straps. Of course she's new to shoes so within two days of getting them she'd discovered the greatest new game in the world - unvelcroing her shoes and taking them off twenty times a day, unvelcroing her shoes then trying to walk and tripping up, unvelcroing her shoes and losing them in the supermarket so you have to retrace your whole trip. Can we just ban velcro in first shoes and go back to little metal buckles please?

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