The grass is still slick with the morning dew, the kind of wetness that seeps through the mesh of a cheap running shoe in exactly 3 seconds. I am watching Leo, my youngest, attempt to navigate a simple sprint across the primary school field. He’s 7, an age where grace is usually a foreign concept, but there is something specific about the way his left foot sweeps inward, almost catching his right ankle. It is a rhythmic hitch, a mechanical hiccup in his stride that sends a cold shiver of recognition straight up my spine. My own right hip gives a sympathetic throb, a dull ache I’ve carried since I was 23. It’s the sound of the same drum, just played a generation later.

I recently walked face-first into a glass door at a local cafe. The impact was clean, a sudden halt of momentum that left my nose ringing and 3 bystanders wondering if I’d forgotten how to perceive depth. It was humiliating, but more than that, it was a reminder of how little we actually understand about our bodies in space. We think we are moving through the world, but often we are just reacting to the structural compensations we’ve built up over decades. Seeing Leo trip over his own feet isn’t just about a potential scraped knee; it’s about the 43 years of structural misalignment I can see waiting for him at the finish line if we don’t look closer.

The Loom Analogy: Precision Overlooking

We are frequently told by well-meaning GPs and relatives that children will ‘grow out of’ their clumsy phases. In-toeing, flat feet, the ‘W’ sit-these are treated as adorable quirks of development, like losing baby teeth. But this dismissal ignores the fundamental laws of tension. Taylor B.K., a thread tension calibrator who spends their life ensuring that industrial looms don’t snap under the weight of their own velocity, once told me that a single millimeter of deviation at the start of a weave results in a 13-inch flaw by the time the fabric is finished.

The human body is no different. A 3-degree inward rotation of the femur in a 7-year-old isn’t just a phase; it is the blueprint for how their pelvis will sit when they are 53.

The Hidden Cost of Inefficiency

There is a specific kind of frustration in watching a child struggle with coordination while being told it’s nothing. You see the way their shoes wear down on the inside edges after only 33 days of wear. You see them tire out faster than their peers because their muscles are working 3 times as hard just to keep their knees from knocking together. This isn’t just about ‘clumsiness.’ It is about the biomechanical efficiency of a human being. When a child’s foot is flat, the entire kinetic chain-the ankle, the knee, the hip, and the lower back-is forced to compensate. They aren’t just walking; they are navigating a series of internal structural failures with every step.

Three Paths to the Pigeon Toe

In-toeing, often referred to as ‘pigeon-toed’ walking, usually stems from one of 3 distinct areas. It could be metatarsus adductus, where the foot itself is curved inward. It could be internal tibial torsion, a twist in the shin bone that usually becomes apparent when a child starts walking around 13 months of age. Or, most complexly, it could be femoral anteversion, where the thigh bone is rotated inward at the hip.

Each of these requires a different approach, yet they are all too often lumped into the ‘he’ll be fine’ category. But what does ‘fine’ look like at age 63? It looks like hip replacements. It looks like chronic sciatica. It looks like the glass door I hit because my proprioception was slightly off-kilter due to my own uncorrected gait.

If your child’s feet look like they are collapsing inward, or if they seem to trip over ‘air’ more than 3 times a day, there is a story being told by their musculoskeletal system. We have to stop reading the cliff notes and start looking at the fine print.

[the body remembers what the mind ignores]

The Proprioceptive Lie

There is a profound sense of relief that comes from precision. In my own journey of trying to fix my post-glass-door-collision awareness, I’ve realized that my own feet have been ‘lying’ to me for years. They told my brain they were flat on the ground when they were actually rolled inward by 13 degrees. My brain adjusted, my hips tilted, and my spine curved to match. By the time I realized it, I had spent 233 months reinforcing a pattern of movement that was fundamentally broken. I don’t want that for Leo.

We need to look at the ‘tripod’ of the foot. The heel, the base of the big toe, and the base of the little toe. In a healthy gait, these 3 points distribute weight evenly. In a child with significant flat feet or in-toeing, that tripod is tilted. Imagine trying to build a house on a tripod where one leg is 3 inches shorter than the others. This is what we do when we ignore childhood gait issues-we try to fix the ‘back pain’ or the ‘knee strain’ in adulthood without ever looking at the foundation.

The Cognitive Tax

I’ve spent the last 63 minutes researching the long-term effects of uncorrected femoral rotation. It’s not just about sport; it’s about the daily tax on the nervous system. When your body is constantly fighting its own geometry, you are in a state of low-level chronic stress. You are more tired. You are more prone to injury.

You might even be more likely to walk into a glass door because your brain is too busy managing your precarious balance to notice the reflection in front of you. It’s a cognitive load that children shouldn’t have to carry.

The Symphony of Motion

Taylor B.K. once showed me a piece of silk that had been ruined by a miscalibrated loom. To the untrained eye, it looked fine. But when you held it up to the light, you could see the tension lines-the places where the threads were screaming. We see the ‘fine’ exterior, but we miss the tension lines. We miss the 3 millimeters of deviation that will eventually become a lifetime of discomfort.

There are 153 different muscles involved in the simple act of taking a step. It is a symphony of coordination that we take for granted until the conductor starts missing beats. For a child, whose bones are still ossifying and whose neural pathways are still forming, the opportunity for correction is a narrow window. It’s not about perfection; it’s about alignment.

Commitment to Alignment

I’ve decided that ‘growing out of it’ is a gamble I’m no longer willing to take with my son’s health. We are going to address the 13-degree tilt. We are going to look at the way his shoes wear down. We are going to listen to what his clumsy walk is trying to tell us. Because if there is one thing I’ve learned from my own bruised nose and aching hips, it’s that the body never forgets a bad start. It just finds more expensive ways to tell you about it later.