10-year-old can’t tie shoe

[Anonymous]

My DS is 13 and still struggles. He’s always had fine and gross motor struggles, so I know it’s related (and DH lacks patience to help him, whereas I’m left-handed and DS is right-handed, so my demonstrations are only kinda useful).

I figure he’ll figure it out eventually, or get speed laces (https://www.amazon.com/speed-laces/s?k=speed+laces) for his athletic shoes in the future.

[Anonymous]

It may seem trivial but usually one issue like this does not exist in isolation and is not likely to get better at age 10 on its own. Does he have issues with fine motor skills in other areas like handwriting, cutting, typing? Or vision problems limiting his hand-eye coordination? As a professional working in a school more and more kids are being seen with poor motor skills likely due to limited play as young children (bc of more screen time) I would assume

[Anonymous]

When you say “trying to teach him since K” do you mean you’ve consistently bought him shoes with laces as his primary shoes that he puts on at least everyday and takes 5-10 min to tie them and still struggles with it, every single day since K?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It may seem trivial but usually one issue like this does not exist in isolation and is not likely to get better at age 10 on its own. Does he have issues with fine motor skills in other areas like handwriting, cutting, typing? Or vision problems limiting his hand-eye coordination? As a professional working in a school more and more kids are being seen with poor motor skills likely due to limited play as young children (bc of more screen time) I would assume

As a “professional” you’d make a sweeping assumption like this? Horrible that you “assume” this rather than that the child has an underlying neurological issue like my son does. With “professionals” like you it’s no wonder we have trouble getting the school to take his IEP seriously.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At some point the cooler shoes are tie shoes not velcro, they will figure it out when they want those shoes instead of the velcro.

Exactly! Happened for my kid at 13, so what
I think he could more or less tie his wrestling shoes though at 12

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At some point the cooler shoes are tie shoes not velcro, they will figure it out when they want those shoes instead of the velcro.

People who can't tie shoes have large overlap with people who don't understand fashion trendiness.

They’ll catch up don’t worry

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It may seem trivial but usually one issue like this does not exist in isolation and is not likely to get better at age 10 on its own. Does he have issues with fine motor skills in other areas like handwriting, cutting, typing? Or vision problems limiting his hand-eye coordination? As a professional working in a school more and more kids are being seen with poor motor skills likely due to limited play as young children (bc of more screen time) I would assume

Not OP but my kid was good at handwriting, cutting, and typing - heck he can even sew with a simple stitch - but shoelaces? Nope, just wasn’t interested, and then he just started wearing shoes he needed to tie and that was that.