My kids wouldn’t wear shoes until first grade, and at that they were off before the bus got home. Builds a tough layer of calloused skin. Those kids played stick ball on blacktop at four in the afternoon in August in their bare feet. It’s actually better for you.
Heh, my feet in the account above were so heavily calloused due to a lifelong fungal infection I got as a kid in the Philippines, that they occasionally cracked and bled from being so heavily calloused and wouldn’t heal for weeks or months.
I nearly had bare feet like shoes in that state and was used to walking around in my bare feet, which is why, in my semi-inebriated state, it didn’t even cross my mind that the hot road would be a...thing!