You can clearly tell when my eight year old is walking through the house. He sounds like the cliche: a herd of elephants. He’s not the only one I’ve noticed either. When my sister was his age she walked heavily. Why are kids so heavy?
What’s up with that?
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Oof. I felt that. I’ve always been the opposite, accidentally sneaking up on people because I’m so quiet lol. But I also grew up in a mobile home with a mother that used to get migraines frequently, so I learned to stay quiet young.
Enrol him in ballet and he will learn not to stomp around on stage.
I would like to do this with my husband. He makes as much noise with his feet / footwear at all times. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.
A lot of kids try to drive their foot straight down into the ground and stomp rather than heel-first and rolling their foot as they walk. When they’re babies learning to walk that’s basically how they have to because they have no spatial awareness yet and can only tell their foot is down by feeling the floor. A lot of kids grow out of it, a lot of kids don’t. It’s not really a problem either way.
It’s easy to fix with some simple instruction. At 8, it should be pretty easy, I just had to teach my 6 year old because he would literally shake the house with his stomping and he got the hang of it pretty quick and is much quieter until he decided to run. It helps if you give them fun goals like being able to sneak up on their siblings or parents to scare them.
some people are just like that, my brother is 21 and i can tell when he wakes up because my floor shakes as he walks to the bathroom (he is not obese either)
Tell me about it. Our upstairs neighbors have a four year old who sounds like he just enjoys stomp-running everywhere.
Kids have to learn to be quiet. So with experiences like sneaking to get sweets from squeaky places. Not getting caught. Or even trying to sneak up on a cat can train a kid to be much more self aware of their noise production.
quietly walking can be cumbersome for adults as well.
the level of articulation & grace that goes into walking with dampened effect is highly layered. walking at its base principle is falling:
[(fall) {stop} (fall) {stop}]
each {stop} is accompanied by a transmutation of energy; kinetic to sound.
so the simplest i can state this case would be that as we age & acquire more experience in the motion, our system of falling becomes more autistic. we (fall) less on the flat of our feet & (rest) more on the heel. the heel then rolls onto the flat which minimizes the decibel output.
children are, very simply, stomping because much like their ability to communicate, their motor functions have yet to mature into the sophistication we as adults have only come to know for some time ourselves.
Pro tip for raising kids, especially boys. Load them up with ninja/martial arts cartoons/movies. Well that just seems like you are raising them to be violent. Nope. You teach them to never hurt anyone duh. But one of the key attributes of anyone trained in martial arts is being able to move stealthily. Especially ninjas. And that will stick with them for life. I am 40 years old and 235 lbs. I can move through the house without making a sound. I can literally run up a flight of stairs with less noise than my cat. And bonus the soft movement is easy on the joints. All because I loved ninja turtles as a kid. I would practice moving as quietly as possible.
Lighter people can get away with stepping heavily for longer, since there’s less weight on their joints. Heavier older people learn that abrupt changes in momentum hurt their joints.
My kid is 35 pounds, he is definitely no stealth ninja walking around the house. He is so loud you would think he does it on purpose. Even a 200 pound adult isn’t as loud.
If I had to guess I woul say he isn’t in full control of his movements. And quite frankly… he doesn’t care
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