Originally Posted by
Stucky
What Atbman said is very true! Training wheels are an impediment to learning to ride. I'll never forget, as a kid, 40-something years ago, getting on my niece's bike which had training wheels (I already knew how to ride)....it freaked me out, even then, how the bike would just flop to the wrong side when you'd go to make the slightest turn. Totally counter-intuitive and counter-productive; If you get used to that first, you basically have to learn a whole new set of skills to ride with out the training wheels; and those new skills are basically the diametric OPPOSITE of the habits you've learned from the training wheels. It took YEARS for that niece to learn to actually ride....vs. literally 5 minutes for myself and many others I grew up with to learn the old-fashioned non-training wheel way.
Before I was 10 years old, I vowed that i would never, EVER put a set of training wheels on a kid's bike.
Kids are different what works for one might not work for the other. My grandson learned to ride a 2 wheeler and a motorcycle by 3 years old. We used both a balance bike and a regular bike with training wheels. My grandaughter never got the balance bike, so we put her on a regular bike with training wheels when she turned 5 we took them off she was riding her bike in one minute. So you should not generalize just cause of your experience. There are many different ways to teach a young child to ride a bike, I am for any that works for you.