I went to Stride Rite today. I was very disapointed with my first visit there in October, and haven’t been back. However, so many of you rave about the shoes, I thought I’d give it another try. question is: 1) What "Step" is your LO in? The website says LOs should be in Step 2 for the first 5 months they are walking. The sales lady talked me into a Step 3. (DS has only been walking for about 2.5 months.) 2) They measured him a size 5, but she highly suggested we get a 5.5. Does that sound right? They look huge!!

Better big than small, in my opinion. We went to a Stride Rite in our area just before Christmas and the guy didn’t even measure my son. He went off the size I thought he was and then told me he had plenty of growing room. We bought 2 pair of shoes that totaled more than $75. I went to a Stride Rite at a different mall this weekend just to see what was on sale, and when she measured DS she said he was a 6. I complained about the other store to her and apparently I wasn’t the first one. He was wearing one of the pairs of shoes we had bought not even a month earlier, so she said she would damage them out for us and give us the next size up so we wouldn’t have to pay for the new ones. I feel so bad I’ve been cramming his foot into a shoe that was too small! BTW, the lady estimated that kids go up a 1/2 size every 2 3 months, so at Stride Rite’s prices I will be buying big! DS has been wearing the "off and running" shoes. He has only been walking well for 3 1/2 mos. but he runs everywhere so we just decided to go with the real shoes.

Yeah, the first time I went in, I was looking for black dress shoes. I know the only kind they have are the old fashioned looking ones with the flat bottoms, but they were way better than the other ones I had found at BRU, etc. Anyway, DS wasn’t walking yet and the lady told me that putting him in "real walking shoes" would encourage him to walk better. We all know that is BS and I was really disappointed that a so called "shoe expert" would tell a customer that in this day and age. If I hadn’t needed the shoes for a wedding, I would have walked out right then. We had him measured because the pair of Stride Rite shoes he has seemed to be bothering him because he would throw a fit everytime we tried to put them on him (he used to love his shoes and putting them on). They were a 5.5. So the guy at the shoe store brought us out a 6 and said that it may just be the way his feet are shaped. Either way, he loves the new shoes and gives us minimal trouble now when we put them on. I know they aren’t too big because he has no problem in them. It is fairly common to go up a half to a full size because of how fast they grow. I know I ordered some pedipeds online. I measured according to their site guidlines and got him a size 4 because that is what he measured at. He outgrew them in like a month and he never really could wear them with socks, so definitely will always go up a size. Step 2 is for those who are just beginning to walk crawling and cruising. A 5.5 sounds right. They go up half a size to give some growing room that should last about 3 4 months. It is an eighth of an inch bigger than what he’s measuring at.