Pediatric Shoe Guide: How to Choose Supportive Shoes for Children with Foot and Gait Conditions
By Juan Valenzuela, Certified Children’s Shoe Fitter | Washington, D.C.
After more than a decade of helping families and working alongside physical therapists, occupational therapists, and pediatricians, I kept running into the same problem — parents were leaving appointments with a recommendation for “supportive shoes” but no clear guidance on what that actually meant. And clinicians, as knowledgeable as they are, often had no simple framework to give families a confident, specific answer.
That gap is exactly what led me to write the Pediatric Shoe Guide: How to Choose Supportive Shoes for Children with Foot and Gait Conditions.
Who Is This Book For?
For physical and occupational therapists: Every pediatric PT and OT knows footwear matters. But few were ever taught a simple, reliable way to evaluate shoes or explain recommendations to families. The result is a familiar moment in the clinic: a parent asks, “What shoes should my child be wearing?” — and the answer can feel vague, inconsistent, or difficult to explain quickly. This guide gives you a clinical framework you can use in seconds and teach to families in plain language.
For pediatricians and other healthcare providers: If you are regularly advising families on footwear for children with developmental or orthopedic conditions, this guide provides the footwear knowledge to complement your clinical expertise.
For parents: While this guide was written with clinicians in mind, parents will benefit from it just as much. If your child has been diagnosed with flat feet, toe walking, in-toeing, knock knees, low muscle tone, or heel pain — and a doctor or therapist has recommended supportive shoes — this book will help you understand exactly what to look for, what to avoid, and which shoe features actually make a difference. It also includes a curated list of supportive shoes so you can shop with confidence.
What Does the Book Cover?
The Pediatric Shoe Guide covers the essential footwear knowledge that most clinicians and parents never receive — organized in a way that is fast to read and immediately usable.
Here is what you will find inside:
How to evaluate any children’s shoe for structural support. I walk you through the three key tests — the heel counter test, the flex test, and the twist test — that allow you to assess any shoe in under 30 seconds. These are the same tests I use every day at the store, and they work on any brand or style.
Condition-specific guidance. The book includes dedicated sections on the most common foot and gait conditions I see in children, including flat feet, toe walking, in-toeing, heel pain, knock knees, and low muscle tone. For each condition, I explain which shoe features help, which features to avoid, and what to communicate to families.
How to identify foot shape and recommend the right width. One of the most overlooked aspects of shoe fitting is width. Most children are fitted in medium-width shoes regardless of their actual foot shape — and for children with wide, extra wide, or narrow feet, this can undermine everything else. This guide teaches you how to identify foot shape and match it to the right shoe.
How to fit shoes over orthotics, AFOs, and SMOs. If your child or patient wears a brace or custom orthotic, finding the right shoe is a completely different process. I cover exactly how to approach this, including how to determine the correct shoe size when accommodating a device.
A curated list of supportive shoes. Parents and clinicians alike will appreciate the ready-to-use list of recommended supportive shoes organized by condition and foot shape — so you are never starting from scratch when a family asks where to buy.
A practical framework you can share with families. By the end of the book, you will have a simple, repeatable process for evaluating footwear, making confident recommendations, and teaching families what to look for on their own — so they stop coming back with the wrong shoes.
What Readers Are Saying
“By the end of this guide, you’ll have a simple, reliable framework for evaluating footwear, communicating recommendations with confidence, and identifying shoes that support the outcomes you’re working toward with every child.”
Get Your Copy on Amazon
The Pediatric Shoe Guide is available now on Amazon in Kindle, paperback, and hardcover. Whether you are a parent navigating a new diagnosis, a therapist looking for a practical clinical resource, or a pediatrician who wants to give families better footwear guidance — this book was written for you.
Have Questions Before You Buy?
I am happy to answer any questions about the book, its content, or whether it is the right resource for your situation. You can reach me directly at customerservice@fittingchildrenshoes.com or leave a comment below.
If you are a clinician interested in recommending this book to families or using it as a reference in your practice, I would love to hear from you.
Why I Wrote This Book
In 2023, I received the Best Children’s Foot Health & Shoe Fittings Enterprise award in recognition of my work in pediatric foot care. But what motivated me to write this book was not the recognition — it was the families.
Over the years, I have spoken with countless parents who spent months searching for the right shoes for their child, buying the wrong ones, and starting over again. I have also worked alongside brilliant therapists who wanted to help their patients more effectively but simply did not have access to a practical footwear resource.
I wrote this book because I believe that the right shoe, at the right time, can change a child’s experience — improving their posture, their gait, their comfort, and their confidence. And I believe that both parents and clinicians deserve a simple, trustworthy guide to help them make that happen.
