Hilltown Families 
Q&A: How Are You Teaching Your Kids to Ride A Bike?
Question and Answer
Bike safety is an important issue for kids both learning and already riding. Click on the photo for bike safety tips. (Photo credit: Sienna Wildfield)
Anyone have kids just learning to ride a bike, or transitioning out of training wheels? How are you teaching them to ride their bikes? Anyone have some great advise to lend to parents and kids learning to two-wheel it?
- Amanda Saklad suggests: “Ride on grass – falling is less painful.”
- Laura Hoffman suggests: “Yeah, it’s great to find a grassy small decline that they can coast down without pedaling, then when they see that they can do that they can start to learn the pedaling part.”
- Jeff Wagenheim suggests: “Not much of a decline, though. You don’t want them to go too fast. Better that they struggle with pedaling through the grass on level ground than be frightened by speed they can’t control. I took my kids to a baseball field that was level but had recently been mowed, so the grass was short and easy to pedal on.”
- Kate McCarthy Roy suggests: “Raise the training wheels gradually. My daughter crashed once and bent one training wheel all the way up – it was the best way to show her she could do it without them. Or, you get lucky in my son’s case… he wanted them off at age 3 because he saw his 5 year old sister riding a two-wheeler, and he just took off!”
- Tish Serrani suggests: “Training wheels are too dangerous. Balance bikes (without pedals) like Scuut and Zuma to name just two on the market. Kids will be able to ride a real bike younger and safer.”
- Beth Caissie suggests: “We went the balance bike route too–just took the pedals off a small kids bike. Our son rode without pedals for a month or so. Once he could balance for 50′ or more without touching the ground, we put the pedals back on. I ran behind him holding his shoulders (read that it teaches them to balance more) for another week or two and he was off. This was right around his 4th b-day.”
- Jennifer Mitchell Martin suggests: “Both our kids learned after riding with my husband on our tag-a-long. I think it helped them learn balance.”
- Rebecca Dejnak suggests: “Agree a balance bike is fabulous. We have a strider and my daughter was on a regular bike around 4.5 yrs only needing a few days of support, I held onto the back of the seat as she felt safest there and occ the center handle bars initially.”
- Jennifer Neiman Gottlieb suggests: “Our kids had a lot of success learning to ride on grass first (softens the blow!), though my son actually used one of those “like a bikes” without pedals and went to two wheels easily and early. Those things are great!”
- Sara Karz Reid suggests: “My daughter started on a push bike (no pedals), and went right to a two-wheeler without too much difficulty when she was four. There are a lot of bikes out there designed without pedals, but you can also just take the pedals off of a regular bike and put the seat down low. If you don’t have the tools to do it yourself, any bike shop should be able to do it for you.”
- Desiree DuBois suggests: “Runner bikes (no pedals) are the bomb- worked like magic for both our kids. They learned balance and control first and then when they had that down the transition to pedals was quick smooth and easy.”
- Ellie Newman Petrov suggests, “Try a pedal free bike!”
- Susan Countryman suggests, “Pedal-free bikes weren’t on the market when our girl was little and now we are struggling with teaching a tall 8-year-old to ride. The proper sized bike is big so its harder to balance and there’s farther to fall. Anyone dealing with teaching older kids to ride?”
- Sarah Buttenwieser replies, “Grassy slope, don’t pedal (even could take them off for a bit), get the balance going down incline. Balance is the issue. Pick up feet. Feel that & then with the pedals it’ll work (like the pedal-less bikes for tots).”
- Gillian Daley replies, “Lower the bike seat so her feet can touch the ground (or borrow a smaller bike for a bit) and remove the pedal crank (lots of videos on YouTube). This makes a balance bike that is more appropriately sized for an 8 year old. When you put the pedals back on, after much balance play on the bike, keep the seat low so she feels safe enough while adding in the pedaling skills.”
When my son was learning to ride a “2-wheeler” I took him to the ball fields @ Look Park. The dirt on the infield is “nicer” to fall on but hard enough to make pedalling easier for little legs. He got it pretty quickly there! I also made sure he knew how to start off with the pedals @ 9 and 3 o’clock which gives the rider a mechanical advantage from a stop.