It's time for some real sole searching

For those who care about protecting their children's feet for as long as is practically possible, buying good-fitting children's shoes is an expensive business. At three top high street outlets we sampled in Scotland, the average price for a pair of proper shoes, properly-fitted for a two-year-old girl and for a three-year-old boy, was #25, #27.50, and #20; though there are much more expensive choices at up to #41 per pair. This is not taking into account designer shoes and expensive trainers that can cost up to #100 and beyond.

Most irritating of all, these beautifully-made shoes (our sample prices came from Clarks, Start-Rite, and Marks & Spencer respectively) are sometimes still in pristine condition when their wearers have outgrown them. As a result, parents splurge out quite a large proportion of their income every six weeks or so. No wonder they are sometimes tempted to defy sensible advice and purchase cheaper but less supportive versions instead: otherwise, at #11.05 for a first child each week, and #9 for each subsequent child per week, every penny of Child Benefit, and local authority Clothing Allowance of up to #50 a year for low income families, could easily be spent on shoes and nothing else.

And to add insult to potential injury, it takes 18 years for the human foot to develop properly. However, as it seems expensive shoes are here to stay for the time being, it is money well spent, especially in the early years. Buying first shoes should be left as long as possible: six-month-old feet comprise mostly cartilage and can be very easily damaged, even by something as innocuous as a tight-fitting pair of socks or an all-in-one suit. Best wait until the baby is walking. Even at the toddling two-year stage, there are still large gaps between developing bones; and at eight years ill-fitting shoes still have the potential to damage bone structure because bones will still not fully fuse together for another 10 years.

We take about 18,000 footsteps in a day, and when we walk our heels strike the ground with a force equal to twice our body weight. Cash or patience-strapped parents who thrust their children's feet into too-tight, too-pointy, or too-slack shoes, or into high heels and platforms too early, thus run the risk of incurring their tiny offsprings' wrath later on, because painful feet have a habit of making us crabbit. Bunions, corns, ingrowing and ramshorn toenails, bursas, and blisters also look terrible (have you ever noticed the sorry state of some supermodels' feet? No? That's probably because they have been wisely edited out of the photographs you've looked at); so you may also be accused of having had a helping hand in putting off your children's potential partners.

Feel guilty enough now? Good. You're supposed to. Now perhaps you will rush, as thousands of other parents are currently doing, to have said offspring's feet fitted by someone other than you. Most good children's shoe shops have trained fitters, every one we visited was extremely busy at the start of the two-week Back to School panic: Clarks in Glasgow city centre sell some 900 pairs each week during this time; Start-Rite some 600, and Marks & Spencer some 500 each week: that's around 2000 pairs between them each week.

Of course you will already know the x-ray machines that used to kick around children's shoe departments in our childhood have long since been x-rated. At Clarks and Start-Rite, the fitting of young feet consists of getting the child to sit with his or her wee legs dangling mid-air, making sure his socks are pulled up properly but not too high, and placing a manual measuring gauge underneath. This indicates the length of the foot, although the child is not required to place his or her full weight on the gauge. Then a tape is pulled over the widest part of the foot to determine the width. At Clarks our tester Karen Sandeman (aged two) was judged to be size 61/2 G, while three-year-old Robbie Maloney was a 71/2 F. Fitting was done by Michelle, who explained most children's instinctive reaction is to scrunch up their toes in fright at the sight of the approaching gauge. Neither of our two was

caring much about their shoes, mind: they were too busy staring dwam-like over at the Duplo game all the other children were playing. When asked to walk in their new shoes, Karen decided to go on tiptoe with a huge grin on her face, and Robbie began running. These were judged to be good signs the shoes fitted well.

Double-fitting is part of the policy at Clarks, and another assistant took over checking for arch support, heel slip, depth, instep, and ankle comfort. Parents who insist on buying a child shoes that don't necessarily pass these tests get a receipt that says ''self-fit''. Children over size 8 are measured electronically by standing with their full weight on a metal plate.

Although there is only one-third of an inch in a shoe size (and one-sixth of an inch in a half-size), we were quite surprised to discover at Start-Rite that Karen was a size 51/2 F/G, while Robbie was a size 6G even though they'd been measured manually the same way as at Clarks. This discrepancy in sizing is not really significant, except that it highlights the difference between manufacturers and the importance of getting children's feet measured each visit, at every shop. Neither Karen nor Robbie were caring anyway because the play kitchen was much more interesting; though Robbie did say ''ouch!'' when being fitted with a pair he didn't happen to like.

At Marks & Spencer the procedure is different. Children of all ages get to stand on a magic-looking machine while the operator punches a few facts (like male or female) into the electronic keypad. Karen was a size 6G, while Robbie was size 8F on one foot and 8G on the other. One problem we encountered was that the machine was so popular there was a constant queue to get on it, with mothers getting increasingly harassed by being unable to hear their child's foot size being read out by assistants above the racket the children were making. Individual attention was difficult to provide because the place was so busy on our visit, so the onus was unwittingly placed on the mums to make the choice - unwise, when stress tempts us to make do with just a squeeze of the toe.

Perhaps M&S should adopt the ''deli counter'' ticketing system that Clarks uses. There, customers' numbers are called up by assistants when they're free and are reflected on a giant electronic screen on the wall. Though this, too, can be confusing: Robbie, flicking his eyes up at the screen, smugly announced that his feet were size 87.

FOOT THE BILL

n Children's shoes use less materials than adult ones, so how come they're equally, if not more, expensive? We asked Bob Hardy, foot-fitting manager of Clarks and a member of the national Foothealth Register to explain.

Firstly, he says, there are as many manufacturing operations on a child's shoe as on an adult's. And because a child usually only has one good pair of shoes at a time, durability is paramount. ''A child's shoe is worn three to four times more than an adult's, so better quality materials and higher manufacturing standards like moulding come into play,'' says Hardy.

What's more, a fitted shoe comes in whole and half sizes, and five different width fittings each - thus requiring more kit for the manufacturer to invest in, and more space to store stock. Staff training costs money too - Clarks train some 3000 people each year.

All in all, Hardy calculates the difference between buying a fitted pair of shoes and shopping off the shelf works out at 50p a week extra for the consumer.