Giving Up on Shoe Tying Is Not the Answer — A Special-Ed Teacher's Honest Take
Share
The short answer
If you are thinking about giving up on shoe tying, please pause before you do. In almost every case the problem has not been your child or your effort — it has been a teaching method that quietly fails the kids who need the most support. A short break is fine. Switching shoes for school is fine. Quitting forever is the part I would push back on, because the cost shows up in places you might not be expecting.
I am Bobby Morong, a special education teacher. I have sat across from a lot of exhausted, well-meaning parents who told me they were done. I get it. I want to lay out what is actually happening and what to try before you close this chapter for good.
Why parents reach this point — and why it is not a failure
You have probably been at this for months or years. The laces collapse. Your child melts down. You melt down a little inside. Mornings get tense. The advice from the internet is the same advice that has not worked. You start asking yourself a fair question: maybe shoe tying just is not for our family.
That is not weakness. That is a parent making a rational call after a long, draining process. The thing is, the process itself was the problem — not the child, and not you.
What giving up actually costs
Velcro shoes and no-tie laces are wonderful for convenience, and there are absolutely kids who genuinely need them long-term. But for a child who could learn to tie with the right method, defaulting to a permanent workaround quietly costs more than parents expect:
- An ADL skill they will need. Shoe tying is one of the most cited activities of daily living. It shows up in IEPs, in independent living plans, and at sleepovers and overnights for the rest of childhood.
- A confidence beat they could have had. Mastering a hard fine-motor skill teaches a child that they can do hard fine-motor things. That belief generalizes — to handwriting, to buttons, to anything where the first try is wobbly.
- A chance to rewrite the story. When a child has spent years "failing" at a task, the story they carry is "I am the kid who can't." Closing the case keeps that story sealed.
- Quiet exclusion. The kid in Velcro shoes notices when the rest of the class moves on. Even when it does not look like a big deal, it is one more place they feel different.
None of this is meant to guilt you. I am laying it out because most of these costs are invisible in the moment, and they show up later as harder things to fix.
It is almost never too late
The motor skills required for shoe tying are usually in place well before parents think — often by age 5, definitely by age 7, almost always by age 9 or 10. What is in the way at this point is rarely physical readiness. It is the leftover belief that this task is a thing the child cannot do, plus a method that keeps proving them right.
Change the method, change the experience, and the belief usually catches up.
The reframe: the method failed, not the child
The single most useful thing you can say to your child before trying again: “The old way was the problem. We are going to try a different way.”
This is not pep talk. It is also not letting yourself off the hook. It is a literal description of what happened. The standard "loop, swoop, and pull" instructions are vague, the laces collapse before a child can finish a step, and the restart cycle teaches the child that effort does not pay off. That is the failure mode — and it is fixable.
What to try before you give up
- Take a real break first. A week off where shoe tying is not in the air at all. Reset the emotional load.
- Pick a calm time. Never at the door. On a couch, on a bench, on a lap.
- Use a fixed short script. Same words for each step every time — not paraphrased, not improvised.
- Use two-color laces. Removes the directional confusion that wrecks half of all attempts.
- Teach with backward chaining. You do every step but the last; your child finishes and succeeds. Build backward through the sequence so every session ends on a win. Full guide here.
- Stop the collapse. The reason kids restart is the laces fall apart mid-step. If you stop the collapse, you stop the restart loop — and your child can finally rehearse the actual skill.
Permission to take a break — not to quit
If today is bad, take today off. If this week is bad, take the week. Use Velcro for a stretch so mornings stop being a battle. Those are sane decisions — they are not giving up. Giving up is closing the door for good, on a skill your child probably could learn with a different approach.
How Training Ties helps
Training Ties® is the checkpoint tool I built in my classroom because the standard method was failing the kids I was supposed to be teaching. It attaches to your child's real shoes and holds the laces steady at the two moments where shoe tying usually collapses. The tool does not tie for them — it just stops the restart loop that has probably been the actual obstacle this whole time.
For a child who has been "failing" at this for years, a few clean reps where the laces actually stayed put can rewrite the story fast.
Related guides
- My child is 9 and still can't tie their shoes
- My 7-year-old with autism can't tie their shoes — what to do
- How to teach a child to tie shoes without frustration
- Why shoe tying is hard for kids
- Shoe tying glossary
FAQ
Is it OK to give up on teaching my child to tie their shoes?
Taking a break is fine. Using Velcro or no-tie laces for a season is fine. Quitting forever, when most kids could learn with a method that fits how they think, usually costs more than it saves — in independence, in confidence, and in the story your child carries about themselves.
What if my child is older and refuses to even try?
Refusal is almost always self-protection after a long history of failure, not defiance. Reset the frame (“the old way was the problem”), take a real break first, and reintroduce with a method where the laces actually stay put so the next attempts succeed.
Are there kids who really cannot learn to tie shoes?
Yes — a small group with specific physical or sensory profiles for whom no-tie laces or Velcro are the right long-term answer. But that group is much smaller than the group of kids who simply have not had a method that fit them. Worth ruling out the method before deciding the child is the issue.
What is the single most important change to try first?
Stop the lace collapse. The restart loop is what teaches kids they cannot do this. A scaffold that holds the progress steady at the hard moments removes that loop, and the rest of the method can finally land.