Yep, goggles under hat, always. She refuses to double hat currently as it gives her a headache, but hat loss has been less of an issue and not one that bothers her if the goggles are unaffected. I'm sure this will change once the margins in times get smaller, however. She has 3c curly hair, which even now it's cut shorter is 'big', so it's always braided tight down for meets else she'd struggle to keep her hat on at all! We haven't entered bullet hat territory yet... I'm dreading these, as between her big head and big hair, it will need some kind of witchcraft to put on!
I will float the idea of the Speedo Speed Sockets to DD. They look to have a much better profile than her current ones, and fit the budget, thank you 👍🏼
Paddles and fins we've found a good fit now, thankfully. The Decathlon bits were bought in the very early days as she needed everything all at once with no time to scour Facebook Marketplace, which would have been eye wateringly expensive to buy new in swim brands. She's had stuff upgraded over time as it became clear equipment just wasn't cutting the mustard or for birthdays/Christmas.
All 3 of us use both TYR and Finis for paddles, as the TYR range means we can get the perfect size and not over strain with something too big, and the various Finis paddles are great for enforcing good technique. For fins, Me and DC1 use the Powerfin Pros, whereas DC2 isn't strong enough for those yet, but has settled happily on Finis Zoomers in the meantime. It has taken some trial an error over a few years to get here though, and I'm sure it will all need reassessing as they grow and develop further.
I've just googled the Strokemakers paddles as I wasn't familiar, and they are essentially the same as TYR's from the look of them (just in more retro colourways)? They really are a great idea - you wouldn't sell shoes in just 'adult' and 'junior' sizes, so why for paddles? Plus the design means you can strap them multiple ways depending on what you're doing/your competence.
My lane of swimmers had their paddles out last night for a backstroke set, and some of them were way too big despite being 'junior' sized, meaning they were changing their technique to slip the water as they just didn't have the strength to pull themselves along with the water pressed fully onto them. It was doing nothing but reinforcing bad technique... (Not my squad, not my schedule, I was just delivering it to the lane. I got them to wear them with just the middle finger strap in the end to make where they'd dropped technique more obvious, and there were paddles falling off all the way down the pool 😏)