For years parents have been teaching their children to ride a bike using training wheels. It’s a time-honored tradition and for most parents, it’s simply the way it’s done. Unfortunately, training wheels don’t train a child to do much beyond pedaling. What’s missing from the equation is the development of required motor skills, particularly balance.
I struggled for several years to teach my middle daughter how to ride a bike. She seemed to have no innate sense of balance and every lesson seemed to bring out the worst in both of us. She was full of anxiety, prone to hysterical outbursts and ready to quit as soon as she sensed an inkling of potential danger.
I’d like to think that I was patient and supportive during these lessons, but in truth I was neither. I was frustrated at her lack of progress and courage. I lost my cool. Months would lapse before either of us was ready to give it another go.
It was not until my daughter had turned 9, three years from when we began this bike riding journey that she first learned to ride. The secret was focusing on balance first. In my research on how to teach a child to ride a bike, I stumbled across balance bikes. These pedal-less training bikes which are popular in Europe teach kids how to balance first.
My daughter was a too big for any of the balance bike models available at the time, so I made one myself by removing the pedals from her bike and lowering the seat. We focused solely on balance by having her drift down a very gentle, grassy slope.
The feel of being able to keep her feet on the ground and right herself when necessary increased her confidence. In a day she was coasting all the way down the 100 yard long hill with her feet up. A few more days of this training and we put the pedals back on her bike.
There was a bit of a back slide. The old fears resurfaced, but ultimately she coasted down a hill, managed to get her feet on the pedals…and she pedaled away.
My youngest daughter, Marlee, is three now. Her personality is quite different than her older sister. She’s more of a daredevil. When she turned three, we got her a Kinderbike, one of the most popular balance bikes on the market.
It only took her four rides to completely master balance. As parents, we never even touched the bike or offered any advice. She had watched her older brother and sister enough to know what bike riding was all about. The Kinderbike is ultra-light and she can sit on it with her feet on the ground quite easily.
That’s really the secret to balance bikes and why kids as young as 18 months can learn to ride on a balance bike. They’re half the weight of a bike you’d find in a department store and smaller. So toddlers have no trouble maneuvering the bikes. They just hope on and propel them forward with their feet.
If you’re a parent of a child in preschool, consider getting a balance bike to help your child master the skill of balance early in life. The older your child gets, the more challenging it will be to teach them to ride a bicycle.
Rob Mabry is a former military journalist, entrepreneur and advocate of teaching children to ride a bicycle using balance bikes. He believes in the philosophy so much that he and his wife Sherry launched Balance Bikes 4 Kids as part of their offering of e-commerce stores.
Parenting viewpoints from parents in the trenches, because parenting doesn’t come with a manual. In addition to
Balance bikes for kids have to be THE way to teach a child to ride. I taught my older daughter using training wheels – and even now she is still nervous on her bike (at nearly 7 years old) – yet my 2 year old boy just bombs around on his balance bike. It is all about making balance instinctive and building confidence.