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Regular part of development BUT we took our son to a chiropractor and that has really helped his in toeing.

@agold: for what it’s worth my son walked slightly pigeon toed until just recently (he’s 2). I always brought it up and the doctor was never concerned. He said he doesn’t recommend intervention until age 5 because it almost always corrects itself

@pinkcupcake: @Silva: Thanks for sharing your experiences! I am hoping that she is just walking like that while pushing her doll stroller on our evening walks. Im going to watch her tomorrow morning and see how it looks.

@agold: Hey there! Hopefully this can be of some help to you. I was “pigeon-toed” for my entire childhood and my parents were always told I would grow out of it. I had a lot of pain, especially knee pain, around your daughter’s age and onward. Ever since I was a baby and my parents first brought it up to my doctor, they were told it was normal and I would grow out of it.

Fast forward to high school. Chronic pain, still “pigeon toed,” clumsy…nothing had ever improved. I FINALLY found a miracle worker. A great physical therapist who actually looked into everything for me. I was diagnosed with bilateral femoral anteversion. Basically, my hip joints are turned inward and therefore both femurs are “tilted” inward. This therapist essentially taught me how to walk (I swung my legs around before) and helped me manage my pain.

The treatment for femoral anteversion is supposed to happen during infancy, ideally. They do a femoral osteotomy (don’t google if you feel squeamish) - basically they saw the femur in half and rotate it and reattach. Looong recovery. By the time I got my diagnosis I was almost 16 and too old to treat with that kind of intense surgery. It’s better for kids.

Physical therapy, pain management, and learning to live within my limits helped.

If you have any others questions feel free to ask! Good for you for seeking this out for your daughter. If your ped brushes it off, ask for a referral to orthopedics.

@agold: I’m not a medical professional so I can of course only speak anecdotally, but I remember my PT saying that when we face different “deformities” or abnormalities in our anatomy, we tend to just find ways to cope. So sticking her butt out may be the way she has found to maintain balance. For me, it was shifting weight between sides. And swinging my legs outward and around.

The diagnosis came from the PT herself, by doing version tests (where they use an angle and measure how far you can bend your joints in every direction, basically) and showing us how far off my measurements were from the norm. She referred me to an ortho who was helpful in confirming the diagnosis, but ultimately all she could do besides that was prescribe meds for pain management. She offered to do saline injections to help with pain but I declined that at the time. Physical therapy is my number one tip. Find a good PT and stick with it! They did do X-rays, MRI, CT scans over the years, too, but I’m baffled because somehow the actual diagnosis still got ignored until the PT. Hopefully this won’t be the case for you guys but I hope it’s helpful sharing my experience!