When did you learn to tie your shoes?

Post Reply New Topic

I was about six, but I still can't keep my shoes tied. I wore velcro shoes for as long as I could get away with it, and now I just wear Vans with the laces permanently tied so I can just slip them on and off. I would wear velcro shoes still, but I can't find any that look "cool," you know? I might just have to make my own...hmm.

I was about 11.. it was sometime between the ages of 10 and 12, so I'll say 11. I got really embarrassed having to ask the people around me to tie my shoelaces for me and my friends realised this and tried to teach me how to tie them - I couldn't get it so I still tie my shoelaces "the simple way". I still don't understand the crossing over bit and then you pull it and it's a bow.

I was six. Everyone else was learning how and had shown me, so one afternoon when I was in a department store with my mother I just sat down and did them up. But I too have always been a little spotty at it. I tie quadruple or quintuple knots in the laces to prevent them from coming undone.

I still can't and most likely never will beable to, because I'm dyspraxic.

About 4 or 5 at the oldest. I remember which boots I was wearing when I did it for the first time by myself I'm not sure how though, because if I think about it, I get really confused!

Hi, I'm 11, my mom won't let me have a name of my own yet here because I'm too young. She says.

Anyway I just learnd to tie my shoes this past winter. I still don't do a great job of it but I got tired of being picked on for wearing funny velcro sneaks or old man slip ons.

It is hard, the strings get all confusing. My mom colored them differently then I can do it better, but can't really use those ones for school.

I learned to ride my bike really early, I was only 4 and I could ride without training wheels. I even rode away to the toot n' totum one day. I got in trouble. The doctors didn't believe I could ride a two wheeler because I got in trouble at school alot because when I walked I always ran into people. Maybe it was the velcro shoes.

Anyway, I think tying shoes is probably as hard as driving a car, so if you can't do it yet no big deal, there's other stuff for your feet.

bye

Age 11 for me. Until then, I wore velcro shoes.

Why not? I've seek kids with "R" and "L" written on the front of their sneakers in big letters so they can tell right from left. I think "anything that works" is good.

I learned to tie my shoes at the appropriate age, but managed to make knots quite a lot until I was a teen. Even today (age 40) I sometimes have to tie my shoes four or five times before I'm satisfied with them. I hate it when the loops are not even or if they are too big and the loose ends fall through.

I wonder... would it help to have a list of steps with pictures, like you see in Boy Scout manuals for tying complicated knots?

I think I was four, myself; but I always hated doing it for some reason. Even today I just keep my shoes tied loosely and slip in and out of them.

Re. Riding a bike: I just figured out the gears last summer... I'm 22

Even though we live in a "good" school district, they have strict rules and policies for the dress code. Colored shoe laces would indicate gang involvement. My husband and I think it's pretty sad. The only gang we see our son belonging to possibly is the "Polysyllabic Perseverators". And I doubt that will fit on a jacket.

D learned to tie his shoes last year, at age 12, with the help of an OT.

He used velcro or those loopy, springy ones until then.

There were bigger battles to wage.

BeeBee

Instead of color coding the whole laces, just make colored dots with a permanent marker where the laces come together, Aspie's Mom1. My daughter recently learned how to tie laces with the help of her Occupational Therapist. She ties them like this: Make two loops and tie them together, rather than the rabbit goes around the tree and into the hole, the way I learned when I was four. She could not learn the same way I did, so her OT figured out a way she could learn and taught her that way.

For some reason the "knotting the loops" method just didn't work for us. He has it down pretty well now, and he double knots them in the morning so as long as he doesn't have to take them off for PE or something during school, he's ok. And if he does, he knows he can get a pass to the nurse or the office to take his time tying. I like the dots idea though, that would have saved us a lot of aggravation!

When he finally learned to tie, he learned in one night. 4 long hours, during which our 5 year old "picked it up" just by watching us go at it over and over again. That didn't help matters.

That's nuts. In any case, they should be willing to make an exception for him. It wouldn't indicate gang membership if he was the only one (unless he was in a gang of one! ).

I remember I was the last of my peers to learn to tie my shoes. I practiced all summer long during one summer break just so I could come back to school in the Fall knowing how to tie my shoes. I am left-handed so I do not learn alot of things easily (knitting, crochet, how to use a sewing machine, musical instruments...etc.) by example/someone showing me. I have to go off to an isolated place and teach myself after watching someone. I know how to tie my shoes now...but I do it backwards from the way others tie their shoes. As long as I get the job done, why should it matter the path I take?

What's really funny is that I always used to tie right-over-left, right-over left, which meant that the loops ended up with one pointing toward the front of the shoe and one toward my leg. Going right-over-left, left-over-right makes the loops end up balanced on either side of my foot. I was in my 30s before I figured that out.