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Learning to tie their own sneakers is like one of the milestones of preschool life. After learning to walk and muddling their way through the terrible twos, preschoolers learn to count to ten, learn to recite the alphabet, and to recognize numbers and letters, and with the right encouragement and guidance, many even learn to read and write.

Sneaker tying, despite its apparent simpleness once mastered, requires a different type of thought, hand-eye-coordination, and an aspect of fingers-to-string manipulation most kids do not encounter until shoe tying enters their lives. Since movements involved with shoe tying require more than symbol recognition or moving pencils across pieces of paper, a different level of concentration and direction following are necessary in order for children to accomplish this goal. Although children can pretty much learn to tie between ages three and five, some children have more difficulty mastering the skill and may not fully get the hang of it until age six.

The first tip for teaching kids to tie their sneakers is to recognize that hand eye coordination plays a major role in accomplishing this task. Although older children and adults can tie their shoes without even looking, when they learned how to tie, they had to look to see what they were doing. Later on, after the skill is mastered for awhile, the fingers simply know what to do and one will be able to tie without looking.

Therefore, in helping children with the hand-eye-coordination aspect of shoe tying, tie your shoes while they watch to see what you are doing. It is easier for them to see how you tie your own shoe than it is for them to see how to tie theirs because the visual angle will be different.

Continue the process as follows:

After they watch you tie your shoes, have them watch you tie their shoes.

Take your shoes a loose and have kids take their shoes a loose.

Loosen the strings near the eyelets and tell kids to do the same.

Having kids untie and loosen their strings may not seem like much, but it helps familiar kids with the feel of manipulating strings while at the same time assures them they have control over the strings.

Holding the left end of the shoe string in your left hand and the right end of the string in your right hand, pull the strings straight up so your sneaker tightens around your foot again. Have the child do the same.

Now cross your right string over your left string and transfer your right string to your right hand and your left string to your left hand.

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