Honestly this looks so natural and just how kids feet ought to be all summer! Free happy dirty and bare! Parks here have that bark wood chips on the ground and come summertime I do see a few naturally dirty bare feet running around.
Too many parents would have a fit if their kids got dirty feet like that. The neighbor lady behind me sometimes chides her kids for going out in the backyard with "no shoes on". More enlightened parents would encourage dirty bare feet and the really cool parents would join in and see who could get the blackest soles.
Agreed. Just keep a cleaning station next to the back yard hose: a bucket of soapy water to clean, and the hose to rinse off.
When I was a kid, shoes were put into storage the first day of summer vacation and weren't taken out again until school started. Since we went barefoot everywhere, our feet pretty much looked like that much of the time unless we went to the beach.
Me too. Judging by your moniker, you may have been a kid in the 60s as I was. Couldn't wait for it to get warm enough to lose the shoes! Dreaded the fall and a new pair of "school shoes," always hard leather wingtips. Ugh.
Yea same era too. Kids would go barefoot like it was nothing, no one freaked out until people became germaphobes back in the 80's. Now that Covid is here, no kid will more likely enjoy those carefree days of summer...Sad, really sad. Those kids in the picture will more likely to grow up to be well adjusted adults. Chances are they won't need anti-depressants and therapy....
Back in my early childhood in the late 80's, a friend of mine would basically barefoot all summer long, wearing nothing but a T and shorts. He once decided to wade in the mud of a nearby potato field, just to experience what it feels like to wade in a swamp a'la Tarzan's jungle adventures. When he climbed out, his legs were muddy all the way to mid thighs. His mother had an absolute fit, when she saw her son's mud brown legs. It was kinda funny. And now I do regret missing out on things like these.
That kid sure had one heck of a good time! It's quite interesting to see how kids are naturally inclined to walk barefoot, and it seems even more so when their parents don't look at it so kindly. I wish I had the courage to do those things out when I was a boy. My parents probably wouldn't have minded it at all - it's just that I was so shy and scared to try it out, so things kind of worked in the opposite direction for me. I still turned out to be an eager barefooter when I grew older. I'll definitely try to make my future kids into proper barefooters from a very young age, though! Well, as barefooters I guess we all have a duty to our kids to let them enjoy the wonderful feeling of bare feet. Barefooters breed more barefooters, so I suppose there's still going to be barefoot kids around, just not as many as before and they're not going to be so visible in plain sight and in public places. But since I spend my summers (and even my winters) in rural farmland, I know there's always going to be barefoot refuges for the young ones out there!
The irony here is that I grew up to become a barefoot adult, while he's now wearing polished shoes and a suit.
My kids love playing like that and their feet look no different. A lot of people say that playing in playgrounds is dangerous barefoot but unless you live somewhere particularly bad, I personally think it's the other way around. Kids can't climb ladders and stuff properly with shoes, not like they can barefoot. Ah well, my kids love being barefoot, so no worry for me there!
Much less those idiotic "flip-flops." I see kids climbing ladders, etc. in those things and fear they're going to take a header. Absolutely terrible footwear, especially for active children with developing feet.
I saw an article once where some activists were trying to get a law passed that shoes with a shitty design had to come with warning labels that they can cause foot deformities in children. Cant seem to find it again but I would have liked to have known as like most people I have shoe damaged feet.
You would think they would. We live in a sue happy society with lots of ambulance chasers. There are warning labels on children's toys telling parents that this item can be a choking hazard. So why not shoes? WARNING: These shoes and create foot deformities. Wear at your own risk.
Strongly agree. If anything, footwear shouldn't be allowed in playgrounds if we are gonna get super hard on how parents raise their kids. Wearing shoes, sandals, flip-flops and so on just increases their chance of tripping and breaking a bone, and socks are slippery. I think in general, there should be more medical attention given to the effects of footwear on the feet of kids and the long term effects so that doctors and other professionals can properly educate parents.
Don't get me started on "arch support." Along with flip-flops, perhaps the surest way to ruin a foot.
