Every October a parent stands at our counter holding a pair of gloves, because their four-year-old asked for the ones with fingers.
We always say the same thing, and we are going to say it here so you can hear it before you are standing in a shop with a tired child.
Mittens are warmer, and it is not a close call
Four fingers sharing one pocket keep each other warm. Separate them into five little compartments and every finger is out there on its own, with a lot more surface area losing heat and nothing beside it to borrow from.
That is the whole of the science and it does not change with brand or price. For a young child, mittens win.
The age it actually changes
Somewhere around five or six, gloves start to make sense — but not because the child has got warmer. It is because they can finally get them on by themselves.
That is the real test, and it is worth being honest about. If you are the one working each finger into its hole at the door every morning, think about who is doing that at daycare in February. Nobody is. A mitten a child can pull on alone beats a glove that comes off and stays off.
If your big kid wants gloves, let them have gloves. Just keep a pair of mittens in the bag for the cold snaps.
The thing nearly everyone gets backwards
The mitten cuff goes inside the snowsuit sleeve. Not outside, with the sleeve pulled down over it.
We know it looks tidier the other way. But a sleeve sitting over a cuff leaves a little funnel at the wrist, and snow finds it within about four minutes of the first snowbank. Wet wrists are why children come inside crying long before they are actually cold.
Push the cuff up inside the sleeve so there is no gap. That is why long cuffs exist, and it is free.
A thirty-second fit test
Put the mitts on, then ask your child to pick something up off the floor.
If they cannot manage it, the mitts are too big. A mitten a child cannot grip in is a mitten that gets pulled off in the parking lot and never comes home. Check the thumb while you are there — it should sit roughly where their thumb actually is, not an inch past it.
Too tight is worse than slightly loose, though. Fingers need a bit of room to be fingers.
Buy two pairs
Honestly, three. One lives in the backpack and never comes out of it.
For anyone under two, buy the kind joined by a cord. Not because it is cute, though it is, but because single mittens disappear at a rate that has to be seen to be believed.
What is on the wall
We have mittens from baby sizes up through big kids right now — the knit ones on a cord for the little ones, long-cuff pairs for the snowsuit years, a couple of animal ones that toddlers pick out for themselves, and gloves in two sizes for the child who insists.
Come and try them on the actual hands. It takes a minute and you will know straight away.
We are at 5112 Mullen Road in Edmonton, open Monday to Friday 10–6 and weekends 10–4:30, and everything is at princesspea.ca with free shipping across Canada on orders over $149.
