When my son was a young child, he walked on his toes. My doctor told us not to worry about it and that he would grow out of it. He did eventually stop walking on his toes and is fine now. He now has a daughter who walks on her toes, but the doctors are running a bunch of tests to be sure there is nothing wrong. What has changed since my son was young?

Toe walking, walking on the balls of the feet or the toes, is fairly common when children are young. Healthy children, without any neurological (nerve) disorders generally outgrow this type of walking by the age of five years.

Some children, however, like your son, continue to toe walk for longer than is the average. Toe walking can be a sign of a disorder like cerebral palsy or a problem with neurological system. For this reason, if a child continues to walk on his or her toes after age five, it’s generally a good idea to get this checked in order to rule out any possible causes.

It’s entirely possible that your granddaughter has the same thing that your son had, and that sounds like ITW, or idiopathic toe walking. Most children with ITW have no physical reason to do it, they just do. That being said, it is important for your granddaughter to be checked to ensure that something else isn’t causing the toe walking. If there is another problem, then catching it early can help in management and treatment.

In studies done on children with ITW, researchers have found that many are able to change their gait to be more “normal” when they are asked to – and this is the big difference between children with ITW and those with a disorder like cerebral palsy.