First Time Moms

well that was pretty rude of the waitress. it's none of her business how you dress your baby. it's not like you put him in the chair with just his diaper on.

when kayla didn't walk very well outside and we took her places, i didn't put shoes on her either. if it was summer, she went barefoot.

however, when we were at home, i did put on (brand new) running shoes and let her walk around the house to get her used to them. it does take some time for them to get used to wearing shoes. so maybe you can put clean shoes on him and let him walk around the house so he's familiar with the feel of shoes on his feet.

wrt what is socially acceptable for him to wear shoes or not - i say to heck with what other people think. this is your child and you dress him the way you see fit. like i said, it's not as if you're going to bring him places buck naked. i used to bring kayla places in her pj's/onsies. once i brought her to the park in her onsie, planted her in the swing and a baby who was about her age was fully dressed and the parents looked at me and i looked right back at them with a "what?" look on my face. lol. your baby, your choice!

Hi!

I'm not a first-time mom, but I was lurking, just in case a first-timer needed some advice from an experienced old-timer!  :)

I never put shoes on my kids unless I knew they were actually going to get down and walk on their own somewhere in public.

My youngest are twins, 16 1/2 months old. Although I have a pair of soft-soled shoes for them, they have only worn them "out" about 3 times. Of course they end up yanking the shoes off in the car...

I do put socks on them when it's cold out, though.

I went to a restaurant with them for the first time last weekend, and just kept them in socks (seeing that thier shoes were now on the floor in the back seat).  haha

I SAH, so I have them barefoot around the house.  I have tried putting socks on them a few times when we had a cold spell a couple of weeks ago, but they kept taking them off.  Of course.

But if we go out and they will stay in their stroller or in a high chair, I don't worry about the shoes.

I used to work in daycare---all toddlers this age through 2 constantly are taking their shoes and socks off----because they CAN!  I swear, we spent half the day going around putting socks andshoes on the little tykes because they kept taking them off!

Hope that helped!   :)