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Balance bike or pedal bike for 3 year old?

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Balance bike or pedal bike for 3 year old?

Old 03-28-15, 10:46 PM
  #26  
prathmann
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Originally Posted by Stucky
I don't "get" balance bikes. Just get her a real bike and teach her to ride- it takes 5 minutes!!!!

If she must have a balance bike, just get her a regular bike and take the pedals off.
I tend to agree. Once a child is developmentally ready to learn to ride it generally takes less than an hour to learn. And the 'take off the pedals; lower the seat; hobby horse' method works well since it hardly ever involves the painful falls that are common with the use of training wheels or running alongside approaches.
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Old 03-29-15, 02:43 PM
  #27  
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Training wheels, Stucky - correct. Balance bikes, Stucky - not. We use balance bikes at our club and teach anything up to 40 kids per year. Most of them transfer from the balance bike to their own bike at sometime during the morning but not always. This seems to be at variance with your views on them. I prefer to go on the evidence.

Yes, sometimes kids to take to it like "flipping a switch", but half the bikes that they bring with them weigh more than they do, so whatever method you use takes time unless they're really, really, ready. Balance bikes are not counter-intuitive. They teach the first, vital thing that you need to ride a bike - to balance. Once the balance is there, pedalling comes pretty quickly.

Sometimes the kid throws a wobbler and won't use one, nor will s/he go along with no pedals, so we teach them in the more traditional way and it works.

We've had a couple of dyspraxic boys come and their parents have spent up to a year trying to get them to ride using the old-fashioned push along using the saddle or whatever. They were too old and tall so we used their own bike or one of ours. One learned in one and a half x 2hr. sessions and the other, who couldn't even put his leg over the bike without falling over, took nearly 4 x 2hr sessions but he eventually learned.

Me, I'd rather go with hard-earned experience from nearly 17 years running a kids bike club than from anecdotal opinion.

I'm glad you were lucky enough to learn in 5 minutes - so did I, on a 28" wheel roadster with rod brakes and a cross bar which was about shoulder height and about 6" wooden blocks screwed to each side of the pedals so I (age 6) could reach them. But I wouldn't go down that route simply because I did.
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Old 03-29-15, 06:48 PM
  #28  
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U cant teach most 3 years olds how to ride a 2 wheeler in an hour, I dont believe it.
My grandson learned to ride a 2 wheeler when 3, but it took about a year of balance bike
and a regular bike with training wheels to teach how to use the brakes.
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Old 03-30-15, 05:06 AM
  #29  
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Originally Posted by howeeee
U cant teach most 3 years olds how to ride a 2 wheeler in an hour, I dont believe it.
My grandson learned to ride a 2 wheeler when 3, but it took about a year of balance bike
and a regular bike with training wheels to teach how to use the brakes.
Once they've learned to use the balance bike, going on to training wheels is inadvisable, since they can't use what they've learned about balancing. Learning to use the brakes comes along with learning to pedal. They'll fall over/off of course, but that's par for the course. Responses to that vary from drama queen to get up and get on straightaway, depending on personality or the severity of the fall.

But training wheels? Never. They should be banned under whatever Trades Description Act you have in the States. Instruments of the devil.
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Old 03-30-15, 10:32 AM
  #30  
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There are four year-olds around here who ride little teeny motorcycles.....real internal-combustion engine motorcycles.... You'd be surprised at what small kids are capable of.
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Old 04-06-15, 03:33 PM
  #31  
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Originally Posted by atbman
Once they've learned to use the balance bike, going on to training wheels is inadvisable, since they can't use what they've learned about balancing. Learning to use the brakes comes along with learning to pedal. They'll fall over/off of course, but that's par for the course. Responses to that vary from drama queen to get up and get on straightaway, depending on personality or the severity of the fall.

But training wheels? Never. They should be banned under whatever Trades Description Act you have in the States. Instruments of the devil.
not true
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Old 04-07-15, 11:51 PM
  #32  
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She is just 3 years old. So I think balanced bike will be good and safer for her.
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Old 04-08-15, 08:29 AM
  #33  
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Originally Posted by howeeee
not true
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.
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Old 04-08-15, 04:50 PM
  #34  
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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.
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Old 05-19-15, 01:22 PM
  #35  
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Whether it was the "best" approach or nor: I went with the training wheels for my 2y/o daughter mid-last year.

Why? Because all her friends had them and she wanted to ride with them and fit in - and she loves to ride her bike both with her friends and with me around the neighborhood. Now that she's 3 and rode her bike for half last summer and going into this summer: I suspect I'll be taking the training wheels off later this year.
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Old 05-19-15, 03:37 PM
  #36  
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Balance bike is the way to go also because they are so much lighter. My younger daughter rode the balance bike since she was two and zipped around in the neighborhood easily. My older one never enjoyed her heavy Schwinn bike much until she was almost 4.5 when I took the training wheel off (I didn't know about balance bike until later) and her legs were long enough to reach the ground .
It took half an hour for my younger one to get used to transition to a regular bike. Now at 6 she has plenty of energy to spare after 10-mile rides with us.
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Old 06-05-20, 04:23 AM
  #37  
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Definitely go with a balance bike

Like many others have said in this thread, a balance bike is the way to go. They're lighter and easier for young children to handle. They also teach kids how to balance which is one of the hardest parts of riding a bike. With training wheels, kids develop a false sense of security when it comes to balance that can be hard to correct.
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