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On Newsstands Now!
Check out the May 2012 issue: raw stories, shocking confessions, candid advice about motherhood—and more!
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How To Teach Your Child to Ride a Bike… Without Pedals
May 24th, 2011
The Strider PREbike
I was commiserating with a friend recently about how our children, who are in grade 3, do not yet ride two-wheelers. Our boys find safety in the comfort of the four-wheeler approach and have expressed no desire to learn to ride. I often wonder if I just waited too late with him; if he just got too used to always having the added side support of the training wheels. I thought that if we had started teaching him without ever using the (slightly false) comfort of training wheels to begin with, he would have never come to rely on them so much. If he had learned the fundamentals of balancing on only tw0-wheels, he would always be comfortable riding a bike.
And that’s when I heard about something called a balance bike.
Balance bikes, essentially, are bikes that are built without pedals. No, really. They look exactly like regular bikes; they have two wheels, a seat and handlebars, but they just don’t have any pedals. Riders use their own feet to make the bike move, while getting themselves comfortable with how a 2-wheeler works. They learn the confidence it takes to ride a bike and improve both their balance and coordination in the process. Balance bikes are made for children as young as one or two, and go up to 16-inch sizes for the older learner.
A friend recently took the pedals off of his reluctant rider’s bike and she was riding a two-wheeler in a matter of just a few hours. I’m thinking that this coming weekend, I will teach myself how to use my husband’s tools so I can take the wheels off of my son’s bike. I have a feeling he will be riding his bike in no time at all.
I guess sometimes it’s just a matter of thinking outside the box. What about YOU? Have you ever used a somewhat unconventional method to teach your child a basic skill?
The Strider PREbike $130, available at balancebikescanada.ca
—Ali, Senior Associate Editor of Cf.ca
Copyright © 2012 St. Joseph Media. All Rights Reserved.
So after seeing this bike my husband had this revelation that rather than buying a brand new bike that he would mcgyver our daughter’s existing one by removing the pedals and the training wheels. I can tell you this…it works! In a mere two days she had the confidence and balance and was literally begging us to put her pedals back on. We put them on and she was off! So we told others in the neighbourhood and we have two more success stories to report. It seems so intuitive that having to master balance, steering and pedalling might be too much. Whether you get a PREbike and modify your own; it works!
Tracy, We tried the same thing and ended up buying a Strider. Our daughter started riding at 16 months and there is no way that even the smallest pedal bike with the cranks removed will be small enough or light enough for most kids even under 3. Just my thoughts. The most important thing is getting them outside and having fun!