burritos

In an effort to get my 14 y/o off the computer I hand him money and tell him to bike to a store to get food. The poor food choice joints range from 2-3 miles away. It gets him off the screen for about 1-2 hrs.

CAT7RDR

I have to bribe my Terrier with a two mile walk before he allows me to go on a bike ride. Less guilt and a healthy doggy that way.

cxwrench

Why do you have to bribe him to get off the computer? You're the parent, do parent stuff.

pdlamb

When my kids were children, I'd ride with them to the bookstore many summer weekends. The big draw at the bookstore wasn't the books, of course, it was the "coffee" confections. My wife would drive down, and anyone who didn't want to bicycle home could put their bikes on the car rack and ride home with her.

It paid off, long term. My younger daughter bicycled across the U.S. with me the summer after she graduated from college!

GlennR

My son got me off the couch.



He was never into video games since he had you pay for them with his own money. He bought a Cervelo p2 instead.

bOsscO

I'll sometimes bribe my 12 y/o that I'll buy him an ice cream if he joins me on a ride uptown (usually to pick up groceries or some other item). Beauty is then we have to ride home after.
Other times, he'll bribe me to join him on a ride to "see if I can catch him".

indyfabz

tyrion

My kid doesn't eat dinner unless he captures at least one Strava KOM. Needless to say, he's getting very fast.

AdkMtnMonster

I bring my boys with me on every single ride. I bribe them with chamois cream and Assos bibshorts. They’re happy to go for the duration.

roth rothar

I hope your boy's don't get too far ahead or too far behind.

Cyclist0108

I had a similar problem with my kid. He was getting fat and lazy and playing computer games to excess, and his school-work was suffering. At first I simply disconnected him, but it got too hard to enforce when he needed internet access for school. Somehow I managed to get him interested in bikes, and in mountain biking in particular, and it really took off. He is now the most physically fit of anyone in the family, and much more technically capable. He also has become a pretty good mechanic. He is much more engaged in school-work and just got admitted to a competitive engineering program. He still games, but now he self-regulates. We did purchase good equipment for him (he has two high-quality mountain bikes, one for the high school XC team), but he also has earned some money life-guarding and coaching soccer (pre-pandemic), and has some skin in the game, too.

burritos

Good point. I'm not very good at parenting.

GlennR

Just don't ask him to ride his bike to the 7/11 to get you beer

Cyclist0108

It is quite hard to do, even under the best of circumstances.

Gaming is one of the few ways our kid has managed to stay connected with friends during the pandemic. Fortunately, he now auto-regulates, but you have to walk a very fine balance.

Ultimately, the goal one hopes to arrive at is a kid who, by the time they are 18, doesn't need bribes or threats to be a functional human.

hubcyclist

We don't bribe our 9 y/o, but we do tie cycling into an almost daily exercise requirement. Backstory: he finally learned to ride a bike in March, since school was suspended at that time we made it a mission to get him riding. By that time he had already outgrown the 20" bike and he asked for a road bike like mine. Being the sucker I am, I obliged but got a used felt road bike from another parent in my club. He was into it for a bit but the summer went by and he'd always refuse to ride (we live in a quiet neighborhood with a usually traffic free .25 loop). So the nice bike sat around unused.

But when Sept rolled around, we implemented a requirement to get exercise, generally involving bike, and I'd roll around with him in our neighborhood for an hour, which by the end of our outdoor riding was at about 13mph. Now I have him on zwift (they have free kids accounts). He still doesn't really like it, and in hindsight he just liked the idea of a new bike because it was something new and not because he really wanted to be all in with cycling. On one hand, making him ride his bike might make him not like cycling at all when he's older, but really it's a risk I have to take, because otherwise he wouldn't get enough physical activity, especially these days with remote learning.

Anyhow, I think getting kids active is important and sometimes we just have to make them because not every kid is going to be self-motivated.

Toadmeister

My son has ADHD and finds cycling for any distance difficult. So I do bribe him with treats: Casey's breadsticks and Chocolate Milk.

I stopped forcing him to go. I don't want him to dislike it so much he never comes back to it.

Vitma

I don’t know if anyone is good at parenting...it is one of the toughest things in the world, 24/7 and for decades!

This pandemic is pretty tough on the kids, especially the ones in the teenage years.

As someone else already wrote Gaming is a way how the kids stay socially connected to their friends in this pandemic. This is quite important and you cannot necessarily count this as “screen time”.

On the other hand the kids should also go out and I hope they develop an active lifestyle.

I am not bribing them directly with “if this than that” but we sometimes stop on the way back at a food truck we come by. I hope this adds to their overall experience and makes it fun.

jaxgtr

They used to ride with me when they were younger, but when they could not keep up with me distance wise or speed wise, they opted to do other things. I even tried to gig them a little with "you are letting a old guy out ride you, shame, shame", nothing. One was a runner, but my knee's were never the same after a lot of running in the 80's, the other was not a cardio fan, so he he would run just enough or ride just enough to say I did that.

However, they never knew the password to the router or the internet. I controlled that I was the East Germans along the Berlin wall. If I told them to do something and it was not done, I did not think twice of logging into the router and disabling their MAC connection.

mstateglfr 

I dont bribe em, I make riding interesting though.

Road/MUP rides to the library, to get ice cream, to a couple playgrounds, or to creeks to walk em looking for fish and crayfish.
Singletrack is just standalone where we just ride. But even then, half the time we end up taking a break and walking down to a sandbank to look around.

cxwrench

Well, when you go to a bicycle forum to ask for parenting advice that's a good tip.

Cyclist0108

He didn't ask for advice.

He asked if other people bribed their kids to get them to ride.

Russ Roth

I bribe them with better bikes and parts and let them ride what they like. And practically every day I tell them to grab their coats and shoes, we're going for a bike ride or hike and no isn't an option.they get 1-2 unfettered hours in the morning to play and a couple hours here or there but electronics go off at 8 to get dressed and do school work.

dedhed

Did this when kids were little. Then they became competitive rock climbers and gymnasts so they had plenty of work out.

Darth Lefty 

My kids are little. I can get them to go the playground about a mile away. The little twins are still on balance bikes. I make it a snack-picnic. The older boy always asks to bring his tab and I always tell him no but he's soon going to call me out for hypocrisy. I bring my phone to read Bikeforums.

rsbob 

I would bribe mine to slow down so I can ketchup. A fit 38 YO vs a kinda fit 66 YO is no contesto