Football boot laces

[inthename]

can anyone tell me the name of those laces type thing for trainers/football boots that you don't have to tie? ds has to play football and rugby at school, but his feet are too big for the boots that do up with velcro and hes hopeless at laces! Thanks

Insancerre, tying or not tying shoelaces has no bearing on a persons ability to drive. My own dear dad can't tie laces due to spinal injury and no feeling in his fingertips, yet hes been driving since the age of 18 and is now well into his 70's without even a minor prang on his driving record (suspect thats also why 11 year olds aren't allowed to drive on public roads)

thanks knotty, will have a look

Cannot believe this thread! It's hysterical.

OP asks a simple question and is suddenly an ineffective mother whose son will not be able to drive !!!

DS had appalling fine motor skills and fantastic gross motor skills - which made him a brilliant football goalie who found tying laces very hard! (Driving is much more of a gross motor skills activity, s I don't think it's relevant here).

However, as DS has feet like flippers (same adult size as his school year, so far, every year, and still growing) that are odd shaped, he had to have laced shopes for school as well as football from the age of 8 or so.

I well remember the dailiy routine that summer holiday: get up, have breakfast, practise laces, then free for the day. He was pretty good after 6 weeks! It was good fine motor practice anyway - his handwriting also looked up after that summer....

Mine couldn't tie his laces, either. He has mild dyspraxia, as do a lot of people.

He manages now - it just took him longer to master than it might have done.

At almost 14, he can drive (obviously not on the road, but he copes perfectly well on the race track). His laces often look a bit skewiff, but they do the job.

At 41, I can drive (roads, not race tracks). I rarely tie laces.

AuntieStella do you enjoy being so unpleasant to people?

foofoo, I'm still somewhat amazed that a question about elastic laces provoked all this, probably should have put it in chat and simply put 'what elastic shoe laces would people recommend'
teacher - ds has fabulous fine motor skills (his model making is astounding), can tie laces, but they come undone during wet muddy 2 hour games lessons and the teacher has a tendency to go into full rage mode if they stop to retie laces.

I'd research knots, then, tbh. A double knot on football laces should never come undone if done the right way - but I know there's a 'left over right' type thing that works much better one way than the other. Also, are the laces a thick synthetic sort of fabric? DS's are a thinner cottony type - you can get them from shoe shops or shoe repair shops - and they 'grip' much better in the knot.

teacher has a very good point there - the laces shouldn't come undone if the bow it doubled - 2 of my kids are footballers and after a wet, muddy match or training the problem is the
opposite in that the kids often cannot undo the laces, the mud and water
soaks in and makes the knot solid. Maybe OP's son's laces are made of a more "slippery" synthetic than the water absorbing, soft, type. Perhaps a different knot/ bow technique or different normal laces.

Also the teacher sounds horrible

I'd worry about the triathlon etc. laces being tight enough - my DS1 broke his ankle playing football (just with mates informally) in too loose velcro trainers.

My intention was not to be unpleasant, and I am sorry that it's come across like that.

I thought I was clear in saying that I had no intention to shame children with additional needs, and had hoped the suggestion the those with such needs might also find help the relevant boards might help any readers who don't know those boards exist (as they're not automatically in Active Convos).

Yes, tying laces was normal at school starting age in my generation. As I don't think the development of children has changed that much since the second half of the 20C, I really didn't think it was now seen as normal to be unable to do it at twice the age of less than a generation ago.

I am sorry my surprise at the extent of the changes in expected rates of development showed so badly.

(PS: it wasn't me who brought up driving)

Auntie,

It isn't 'rate of development', it is 'point at which a child learns / is taught specific skills', which is very different.

A child who can, for example, touch type [a vanishing rarity at 8 when I was a child, quite common now], operate an electronic game, trampoline [I knew no-one with a private trampoline as a child, now everyone has them], fit the fiddliest of modern Lego parts, may well have exactly the same 'rate of skills development' as a child of a similar age 35 years ago who could tie laces. But the former may well not have been taught to tie laces - because it isn't a necessary skill until older - any more than the child 35 years ago was taught to touch type. It is a matter of 'order in which skills are taught' not 'developmental stage'.

As another example, I could knit my own jumpers and make my own clothes from patterns at DS's current age (13) - because I needed to. DD won't be able to do the same - not because she 'hasn't developed at the same rate' as I did, but because she hasn't NEEDFED to learn those skills and they haven't been as high priority for me to teach her as they were a priority for my mother and grandmother to teach me.

Not Alan, Ian.

www.fieggen.com/shoelace/index.htm

I think that's why what I was saying came across all wrong, teacher because I was thinking that, even when DC have had no need to tie laces, there's no reason why they can't learn rapidly and securely once there's need. If it's possible for a population of 5 year olds, then it's possible for a population of 11 year olds.

He'll be far safer in traditionally laced and tied boots for contact sports, especially rugby.

I do just wonder, though, Auntie, whether it is just that you weren't aware of children who had difficulty, and so feel that 'everyone' could do it at a younger age?

A bit like Michael Gove (RIP) believed that in his day everyone could read, write and do maths well, and that high-stakes end of course exams were 'the best' because that was the norm in his personla experience, and as a child / teenager [perhaps even as a minister, dare I say it] he didn't have sufficient exposure to those children who struggled in order to make any allowance for them in his plans for the country's educatin as an adult?

I have said throughout 'unless additional needs'

I am well aware that that some children will be later to learn (or never learn) certain skills.

And before Velcro, children did learn how to tie shoelaces securely from a much younger age. It was an expected skill for starting school, achieved routinely by 5 yos. Girls might have been a little later than boys back then (because of buckled shoes being a commoner choice for them) but independence was definitely the expectation well within the infant school years for the typical child.

I think I've probably banged on too much! Sorry for that too.

I remember my friend doing up the laces on my Converse for me at Reading Festival, circa 1988

thanks everybody for your thoughts (perhaps he didn't learn early enough because I'm left handed with very limited use of my right hand due to chronic arthritis so don't tend to have laces and found it impossible to teach him as hes right handed - epic fail)
and yes, the teacher is horrible!

My father had poor fine motor skills too. He just got other people to do his laces for him when he was younger. Possibly with great shame and in secret (I know it was something he was embarrassed about). Of course there have always been people who struggled! And like the OP's son they were shouted at, and possibly in the past hit or abused like left handed people until they learned what is hardly a key life skill.

ds can touch type btw, needs to because his writing is so poor.

My ds too, nooka.

Velcro school shoes must be a blessing for primary school teachers, given the frequency with which children have to change shoes these days. A class of 30 nimble fingered 7 yos would be bad enough!