High Heel Sneakers For Girls?

The latest trend in shoes for kids is bit worrisome – high heel sneakers for girls. High top wedge sneakers became somewhat of an instant hit last year – for women – with designers like Isabel Marant and Marc Jacobs introducing the style. Now the trend has become so popular kids want the shoes.

Skechers has their version of the high heel sneakers for girls, and it looks harmless enough:

The sneaker look so harmless and adorably cute that parents may not realize that inside this pair of sparkly girl’s tennis shoes is a hidden 2 inch wedge heel. Yes, Two Inches.

Now can you imagine little girls running around the school yard with these shoes, let alone walking around in them all day?

As dangerous and unnecessary as these shoes seem to me to be, labels like Ash and Zara are getting in the game and marketing kids wedge sneakers to children and tween audience in sizes starting as small as a 13 (which generally fits a 5-year-old.)

I am so curious as to what other parents think of the newest shoe craze hitting the playgrounds.

There is one mom I know for sure that agrees with me –

“It’s one thing to let a little girl walk around the living room in your heels for a few minutes — it’s another to buy her shoes for everyday use that could potentially mess up her still-developing feet,” Emili Vesilind, a Washington, D.C.-based mom of two, told TODAY.com.

And pediatricians are not too thrilled with the shoe style either-

Dr. Noah Blumofe, a podiatrist practicing in Los Angeles, CA, has this to say about the hidden dangers in high heeled kids’ sneakers:

When you are 2″ and above, you spend the ENTIRE time on the ball of the foot. This forces increased pressure on the ball, causing the fat pad to shift, and press on the heads of the metatarsal bones, which may cause nerve pain. Then you are causing the achilles tendon to shorten early, which is a major cause of foot pains, such as plantar fasciitis. Then it causes your pelvis to tilt, along with your entire body’s alignment.

High heel sneakers for girls – cute harmless fun shoes for kids or a shoe-trend gone wrong?