Further to the horrifying discovery last weekend that I’d hurt Dexie’s feet by popping them in ill-fitting Converses, I finally managed to get the boy to Clarks. Armed with a £50 voucher I’d won from a competition, Dexter and I stepped into the colourful children’s section in our local store in Reading. I’d dragged a friend along too for moral support as I envisaged my monkey would kick off when he realised what we were there for.

We’d picked a good time - 3pm on a friday. As the only customers, we were fussed over perfectly and it didn’t take long for Dexter to realise he was the star of the show. As such, he was more intrigued than angry to have his feet measured. Turns out he’s a 3G and has short, wide and chubby feet (just like his mummy!).

I picked him out a pair of blue cruisers and waited for the inevitable screams as the sales assistant attempted to wrestle them on his feet. To my surprise he didn’t. As you might expect, with all her experience, she was so gentle with him Dexter found it funny rather than painful. Instead he focused all his energy into snatching at her hair as she kneeled down to perform that which mummy and daddy had always found impossible.

But it wasn’t all plain-sailing. The sales assistant noticed that Dexter was curling his toes inwards making it impossible to slip the shoes on. She called over an equally lovely colleague who massaged his toes and the balls of his feet. She told me it was quite normal for children to do this when they were either excited or frightened - a sort of reflex. As Dexter relaxed, she tried again to pop them on, only for Dexie to scrunch up his toes once more.

After ten minutes of gently coaxing them on properly, she suggested we get them on as best we can, then set Dex on his feet to see if he’d straighten his toes of his own accord. But it didn’t work. Dexter continued to curl them up and fill only half the shoes. Both sales assistants scratched their heads and said it might be worth getting his feet looked at if the problem persisted.

We bought the shoes anyway in the hope he’d stop playing silly buggers at home, and would eventually work out it’s far more comfy to put his shoes on properly. But it seems he hasn’t.

Given he still has a tendency to walk on tippy toes (which we had hoped would be corrected by wearing the correct shoes) we’re now thinking he’s walking on the joints of his toes! Yes, my 14 month old appears to be pulling off moves that have taken Darcey Bussell years to perfect.

I’m going to give it two weeks with Dexter more or less continually wearing his new cruisers. If there’s no improvement, I’ll have to get him looked at. I’m guessing the GP will be the first port of call, then hopefully we’ll get a referral to a chiropodist. (*Sigh*) So we’ll be back into the hands of the NHS (oh joy of f*&king joys). They’ve done such a splendid job of botching up my own care recently, I seriously hope they’ll be more careful with Dex.

But the thing that worries me the most about this story is that neither Craig nor I had really noticed in the first place. We knew he was favouring his toes, but neither of us had taken it seriously enough and a problem that coud have been averted, wasn’t. It seems our all-too-cautious approach to our GP might need looking into, and our parenting training wheels could use a bit of tightening!

If anyone has any advice, tips or experience of this, I’d be eternally grateful to hear from you. If there is anything we can do at home to try to encourage him to go flat-footed, it would be very useful to know.

This is neither a sponsored post, nor a commissioned review, but we would like to thank Clarks in Reading for their help. They were thoroughly helpful, professional, and gentle with this first-timer and we’ll be back throughout the years to buy again.