Teach Your Child to Ride a Bike Without Training Wheels
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This is a tried and true method for teaching a child to ride a bike — without expensive equipment, hair loss, or tears.
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We’ve had SIX children learn to ride a bike without training wheels. Our firstborn, of course, was our guinea pig. And as with many things, he was treated to the traditional approach.
In this case, we took off the training wheels and ran along beside, etc. It took about a week, in part because he was mad that we took off the training wheels. It was definitely a push-me, pull-me experience.
With our second son, we heard about this other method. And wow. It’s amazing.
Take off the training wheels AND the pedals.
I read about it in a magazine and told FishPapa about it. Hmmm…. let’s see.
The theory is that without pedals the kid learns to balance. He’s not so focused on pedaling to distract him from balancing. Learn the balance and then the pedaling part will be easy.
This has been amazing with the five kids we’ve used it on. A few runs down the driveway balancing and the kid is ready to get the pedals back on. Each kid has been off and riding in less than an hour.
This is a practically pain-free way of learning to ride a bike without training wheels.
I am TOTALLY trying this! It makes so much sense. We haven’t had any of ours learn yet so this is perfect timing.
Thanks!
Jamie
We just learned about this method a week ago. My husband has been trying to teach our oldest and after many frustrating “bike lessons” he searched on youtube how to teach someone to ride a bike, and this method was on there. He told me about it and I was skeptical, but after her learning to balance without the pedals for a few days, we put the pedals back on and she was riding it the first time she tried!! Now she is riding all over the neighborhood and is so happy! We are thinking we need to start teaching the second one now soon too…we were a little behind with the oldest because she didn’t want to learn because she was so frustrated with it.
I love that idea! My son is only 4 and we just got him a big boy bike last Christmas and he’s still growing into it a bit, but I wonder if this would work for him next year?
We taught ours this way too…it is an awesome tip that so few people seem to think to do. Our kids literally learned within hours how to ride a bike..Best way to teach them IMHO 🙂
Oh My Goodness!! I wish I’d heard this 8 years ago!! My youngest still has trouble balancing!! And he is 13!! shhhh
they make toddler bikes without pedals for just this purpose! my 4-year-old is riding his “pedals bike” with no training wheels after a few months of riding his strider balance bike! stridersports.com
Ahhhhhhhhh! Thank you SO much for this!!! Going to do this soon with my kids!
What age do you train your kids?
@Amy, the boys have varied. I think the youngest was five, the oldest seven.
WOW!! Now you tell me!! After 7 children!! 🙂
Well, there’s always grandkids, huh???!
That is so smart!
Oh wow…that is so smart! We have one more kiddo to train. I think we will be using this tip!
That is how we did it, balance first. But, we did not take the pedals off. We just told him to push with his feet, then pick them up and balance…about 5 minutes later he had balanced long enough to get his feet up on the pedals and he was off. Getting started is the hardest part! :o)
@Tina, We just did the exact same thing for our daughter. She learned to ride this weekend. She got her balance first, then it all seemed to click at the same time. We waited too long with her because she had confidence issues, but plan to teach my son in the spring after he turns 5.