Kid's Hats, Gloves & Scarves (Outerwear)

Hats, mittens or gloves, and neck covers are not extras. A coat insulates only what it wraps around, and the head, hands and neck are the gaps it leaves. These small pieces change how warm a child is by more than a thicker coat ever would.

Hats are judged by ear coverage and by layers. Single-layer knit lets wind pass between the stitches. By comparison, a fleece-lined knit or a fleece hat holds heat far better at the same thickness. Any hat stopping above the ears leaves the coldest part bare. Mittens beat gloves for warmth, because fingers together share heat and fingers in separate tubes each lose it, and below about age five a child cannot find the finger holes anyway. What separates a snow mitten from a knit one is the cuff: a gauntlet cuff, the long extended wrist section, pulls over the coat sleeve and closes the gap completely. Snow that gets into a cuff melts against skin, and a short knit cuff lets it in every time a hand goes down.

Neck covers are where the choice turns into a safety one. A neck gaiter, a simple tube of fabric pulled over the head, cannot catch on playground equipment or be pulled from behind, and a long scarf can do both. Scarves stay off young children. A balaclava, a hood covering head and neck with an opening for the face, removes the gap at the throat that a separate hat and collar always leave. Against every coat on this list, these are the pieces that decide whether the parka, the snowsuit or the puffer actually delivers.

Any climate with a real winter needs all three, and wet snow climates need waterproof shell mittens rather than knit ones. Hats with ear flaps suit children under about four, who will not pull a hat down themselves. Knit gloves soak through in minutes of snow play and then freeze. Scarves stay off anyone under five, and chin ties stay off any hat worn in a car seat or a crib.

Cuff length and thumb angle separate a good mitten from a cheap one. A thumb sewn straight out from the palm makes a child grip against the seam, while an angled thumb follows the hand. Elastic clips threaded through a coat's sleeves attach mittens to the coat rather than the child. This is the only method that survives a school year. Dry mittens inside out on a rack in moving air, never on a radiator, because direct heat shrinks and hardens a leather or coated palm.