Here's Why Gloves Don't Fit Little Hands

For children (ages 1-6, possibly up to age 12) the placement of the thumb on existing kid's gloves is in the wrong place. It's apparent that manufacturers are making children’s gloves using the same pattern as adult gloves, only smaller. In fact, children’s hands are not simply smaller. They are different in that the space between the thumb and forefinger is not as long therefore, the thumb of the glove needs to be moved up toward the finger holes. You can easily see this when you put a glove on a child’s hand, they get their thumb in first and then their little fingers do not reach the proper placement through the finger holes. They usually go about half way, and the little finger does not get that far. This is of course, comes after the struggle to get their fingers in each hole at all, and we know because we struggled getting our little ones fingers in gloves because his fingers simply do not reach the holes!

The next big piece of this puzzle is that as parents, we can't see that our little one's fingers aren't reaching, so we keep trying to funnel them into those four little holes. Being able to completely open the back of the glove will do so many things!

It will give our young children a visual, they can now see right where to put their fingers.

With the thumb properly placed on the glove, their fingers will reach the holes they can see.

Being able to open the back will alleviate the frustration of pulling the lining out of the glove when they take it off.

We'll be able to properly clean the inside of the glove and also allow for sufficient air-flow for thorough drying.

Finally, we will eliminate the emotional heartache that both parent and child feel when we have to struggle every single time we have to wear gloves (that one for me is worth the whole price of admission!).

Finally, we have opted to move the little finger on the glove down to properly fit a human hand. Most all snow gloves have all of our fingers entering the holes at the same time. Look at the the inside of your hand and tell me that your pinky finger is in a perfect line with your other three fingers. Likely not.

This idea was certainly born out of a need for toddlers, but the truth is everyone needs a cold weather glove that properly fits them. Men's hands and not all "big," and women's hands are not men's hands simply smaller. We plan to create real sizes in gloves for real human hands. The zipper in the back of the glove will provide for a more snug fit, thus being safer, more functional, and certainly more comfortable.

So, I now know why, and know from making my kitchen table prototype that the zipper will work, here's what I did next.