Introducing Growing IVY Children Product Research

Building a growing, research-informed resource to help families make more confident choices about the products their children use every day.

As parents, we make countless product decisions for our children.

Which shoes are right for their growing feet? What should we look for in skincare? Which materials matter when choosing toys? When do children actually need a different type of product as they grow?

There is no shortage of information.

Parents can find advice from pediatricians and specialists, recommendations from other parents, product reviews, social media discussions, and thousands of claims from brands.

But having more information doesn’t always make the decision easier.

Sometimes, it makes it harder.

That is why we are launching Growing IVY Children Product Research — a long-term initiative dedicated to bringing together research, expert perspectives, the products available on the market, and the real-world experiences of families.

Our goal is simple:

We do the research, ask the questions, and share what we learn — so parents can make more informed choices for their children.

Why We’re Starting Children Product Research

Growing IVY was built around a question we hear from parents all the time:

How do I know which product is right for my child?

There is rarely one universal answer.

Children develop differently. Families have different priorities. Products are designed around different philosophies. And as new research, technologies, materials and brands emerge, the answers can change.

We believe parents deserve something more useful than another list of “10 best products.”

Instead, we want to understand the questions behind the purchase.

What does existing research tell us?

What do pediatricians, researchers and other specialists think?

How do different brands approach the same problem?

What options are currently available to families?

And perhaps most importantly: what happens when children and parents actually use these products in everyday life?

Growing IVY Children Product Research is our effort to bring these perspectives together.

A Living Research Resource for Parents

This is not intended to be a one-time article or a report that becomes outdated as soon as it is published.

We want to build a living, evolving research resource.

We will take the time each topic requires.

As we discover new research, speak with additional experts, learn about new products and hear from more families, we hope to continue expanding and updating our findings.

Over time, our research will explore different categories of children’s products and different stages of childhood.

We are especially grateful to the parents who have already reached out to Growing IVY with questions, ideas, personal experiences and offers to contribute.

Those conversations helped reinforce something we already believed: some of the most useful knowledge comes from bringing together people who approach the same question from very different perspectives.

Researchers may understand the evidence.

Specialists may see patterns through years of professional experience.

Brands and product designers can explain why products are constructed in particular ways.

And parents can tell us what actually happens at 7:30 in the morning when a toddler refuses to put those shoes on.

We want all of those perspectives at the table.

Our First Research Topic: Children’s Shoes

We are beginning with something almost every parent has questions about:

children’s shoes.

Children’s feet change quickly, particularly during the early years. Yet parents encounter an enormous range of advice about first walking shoes, barefoot-style footwear, flexible soles, arch support, sizing, materials and fit.

At the same time, every child is different.

Some children have wider feet. Others have narrow feet or higher insteps. Some families may be looking for shoes for a new walker, while others need footwear that can keep up with a preschooler who spends the day running, climbing and jumping.

So rather than beginning with a list of recommended shoes, we are beginning with questions.

Question 1: How Should We Choose Shoes at Different Stages of Development?

A baby's relationship with footwear is very different from that of a toddler taking their first steps — and different again from an active preschooler.

We want to better understand how footwear needs may change as children develop.

Our research will explore questions around:

• Pre-walking and early walking

• First walking shoes

• Toddler shoes

• Shoes for increasingly active children

• Fit and sizing as children's feet grow

• Flexibility, structure and different sole designs

• When different types of footwear may — or may not — be useful

Rather than assuming there is one “perfect” shoe, we want to understand what parents should consider at each developmental stage.

Question 2: What Children’s Shoe Brands and Products Are Available?

The children's footwear market is much broader than many parents realize.

Different brands make very different choices around materials, sole construction, width, flexibility, fastening systems, toe-box shape and overall design.

Some emphasize barefoot-inspired construction.

Others focus on support, durability, easy-on designs, specific developmental stages or particular types of activities.

Part of our research will map this landscape.

We want to look beyond the question of “Which brand is best?” and instead ask:

What is each product designed to do — and for which children might that approach make sense?

Our goal is not to promote one brand or one philosophy.

It is to help families understand the choices available to them.

Question 3: What About Different Foot Shapes and Individual Needs?

This is one of the questions we are particularly interested in exploring.

Children's feet are not all shaped the same way.

Parents frequently encounter challenges involving wider or narrower feet, higher insteps, different toe shapes, fit between sizes, or other individual characteristics that make standard shoe recommendations less useful.

We want to understand what products and design approaches exist for children whose feet don't fit neatly into a typical sizing assumption.

We also want to hear directly from specialists and families who have navigated these questions themselves.

Our goal is not to provide medical diagnoses or replace individualized professional advice. Instead, we hope to make it easier for parents to understand the landscape, know what questions to ask, and discover options they may not have known existed.

Research + Expert Perspectives + Real Family Experience

Our approach will bring together several different sources of information.

We plan to review relevant research and professional guidance, speak with experts and researchers, understand how different products are designed, explore the broader children's footwear market, and listen closely to families.

We also want to move beyond research that exists only on a screen.

Growing IVY plans to invite Bay Area families to participate in selected product testing and share their real-world experiences and reviews.

How easy is a shoe to put on?

How does the fit change after several weeks?

Does a child actually want to wear it?

How does it perform during a normal day at preschool, the playground or around town?

These experiences are not substitutes for scientific research — but they can add an important dimension to understanding how products work in everyday family life.

Calling Experts, Researchers, Shoe Brands and Parents

We cannot — and do not want to — build this research alone.

For our first research topic, we would love to hear from people who can contribute meaningful knowledge or firsthand experience around children's footwear.

We welcome participation from pediatric and child development experts, podiatrists and other relevant specialists, academic researchers, footwear designers and children's shoe brands, independent experts, and parents who have spent significant time researching or navigating footwear questions for their own children.

If you have published research, professional expertise, a product or design approach you believe should be considered, or a family experience that could help us ask better questions, we would love to hear from you.

Email: hello@growingivy.xyz
Subject: Shoes Research

Please briefly tell us about your background, research, product or experience and why you would like to contribute.

What Happens to the Research?

What we learn will be organized into a publicly available Growing IVY Children Product Research report designed to help parents understand the topic more easily.

And importantly, publication will not mean the research is finished.

When meaningful new research becomes available, when another expert contributes an important perspective, when we discover a product addressing a problem we had not previously considered, or when family testing reveals something useful, we want the resource to evolve.

Think of it less as a finished ranking and more as a growing body of knowledge for parents.

Shoes Are Only the Beginning

Children's shoes are our first topic, but they will not be our last.

In the future, Growing IVY Children Product Research will explore additional categories of products that families make decisions about throughout childhood.

Some questions may be relatively simple.

Others may take considerably more time.

We are intentionally not putting every topic on a monthly deadline. Good research takes time, and some questions deserve more investigation than others.

What matters to us is that each new topic makes the overall resource a little broader, a little deeper and a little more useful.

Over time, we hope to create an increasingly comprehensive resource built from research, professional expertise, product knowledge and the lived experiences of families.

Building It Together

Growing IVY began with the belief that parents shouldn't have to navigate the enormous world of children's products alone.

Children Product Research is an extension of that idea.

We want to ask better questions.

We want experts to help us understand the evidence.

We want brands and designers to explain the thinking behind their products.

We want parents to tell us what actually works — and what doesn't.

And then we want to make what we learn accessible to other families.

Research. Test. Review. Share.

This is only the beginning.

If you would like to contribute to our first research topic on children's shoes, email hello@growingivy.xyz with the subject line Shoes Research.

Together, we hope to build a product research resource that keeps learning, keeps growing, and becomes more useful with every contribution.

Presented by Growing IVY.