??? It's even cheaper to remove the pedals and cranks from the kid's bike and to lower its saddle. Instant balance bike.

Having had the pleasure in training three kids how to ride a bike, forget training wheels, or taking the pedals off!

find a reasonable long grass hill - not to too steep, but steep enough to allow a kid to go down the hill riding the bike with out pedalling.

and then goto the top of the hill and let them go down the hill on the bike. Once they master the balancing part of going down, they seem to pick up the art of turning the pedals at the end of the hill to keep going (if not, explain what to do)

advantages: doesn't hurt when they fall off, gets them used to rough terrain. it becomes fun once they start to master the balancing bit

We did exactly this for my first son.

We had been trying for weeks without result, both with trainer wheels and to run behind with an attached handle. Then one day we unmounted the pedals and lowered the seat... after just an afternoon we could reattach the pedals and he was now cycling on his own!

I did this with my daughter. She was riding her bike within the hour. I made a game of it with chalk on the street. She how far she could glide, then mark it. Keep repeating... Eventually put on the pedals, and off she went.

It’s much easier to add and remove training wheels than mess with an integrated part of the design.

Eh? They are bolted on with screws and get regulary replaced. It's not any difficult than removing training wheels.

Nope, thread starter has a point here. It's not only pedals and screws. You probably would like to remove the front gears and therefore the chain, that requires you to remove the whole rear weel. What if you have a back-pedalling brake hub. Besides that now you have a "hole" in the gear area, maybe full of oil, Also the bike designed to perfectly run with the full gear on. And so on... you may not want to tamper that "perfectly" aligned system if your kid is playing with it. Nope...it's not just about removing the pedals.

Or just remove the pedals and tape one of the cranks to the chain stay so they don't spin and catch the trousers. Did this with my daughter's bike and it held up fine for the month she pootled on it until she was ready to pedal.

Why do you need to remove any gears? You just unscrew the pedal from the arm and that's it.

I'm really not understanding why you think it's necessary to remove more than that.

I've done it on quite a number of different bikes, it really is quite easy.

You'd think so, but having taken apart a couple of bicycles I gotta say it's far more complicated than say taking apart a PC. There are so many seemingly pointless steps involved like removing C clips that don't belong and solving some topological problems to get the chain out. Notice how the chain and the triangle frame are interlinked.

I have no idea how these victorian steam punk contraptions are assembled and sold at a <$100 price point

Are you maybe thinking about cranksets? All it takes to remove a pedal from the crank is an adjustable spanner.

Define "regularly". I've replaced pedals on bicycles I've owned exactly once in my lifetime. That includes the 4 year period prior to COVID that I commuted by bicycle and caltrain. It was much more difficult to loosen the bolts and get them re-fastened than the training wheels on my oldest's bicycle. Not to mention the handling of the chain.

I switch between toe clips(for commuting) and cleats(for longer rides) at least once a month. Why would you need to handle the chain? Pedals are attached to cranks.

And usually the proper way to mount training wheels is higher than the ground by a couple inches so they only touch the ground when the bike leans a little, encouraging balance.

I tried that, and the kid will then just ride the bike with it leaning all the way to one side till the wheel hits the ground.

I'd really like to see training wheels with adjustable spring tension. Gradually make the spring weaker so the training wheels have less effect every couple weeks, until they aren't really doing anything at all.

How does the kid steer? Bikes need the front wheel to be pretty close to perpendicular with the ground. Tilted over, you'd just go in a tight circle forever, and trying to turn would lift you off the training wheel.

You can still steer, since it is supported by the training wheel then the front wheel can be turned any direction as it isn't needed to be pointing a specific way to maintain balance.

Also I'm talking about the training wheels being lifted an inch or two. Causes a lean of maybe 10 - 15 degrees I'd guess.

Well there's your problem, you're supposed to lift up the training wheels over time. At the beginning they may be used all the time but by the end they should only be there to catch a bike that's falling over.

If the kid would alternate which training wheel is touching, then that would work. But once a side is picked they seem to center their balance between the back wheel and the one training wheel. I started off just barely raising it, and every couple weeks would adjust it another quarter inch or less. eventually they picked a side to lean and stayed with it.

That is where I was hoping to find spring loaded training wheels so that it forces the kid to constantly try to balance. Start off with really stiff springs and then weaken them over time.

Wow you should patent that. Or do a kickstarter. That sounds pretty useful.

Take the pedals off and lower the seat. Tell kid to use his feet. Hey presto, it's a balance bike.

I’ve had the privilege of ‘training’ three kids to ride bikes. As those of us who ride bikes know, there is no way to explain how to do it. Running alongside the kid with a hand on them (or on the handlebars) is useless. Training wheels are useless. The only way for the kid to ‘get it’ is to allow the bike to fall: only when they start to fall, and they instinctively jerk the handlebar the other way, will their muscles ‘understand.’

It only took a couple hours with each kid... pushing them up to speed and then letting go. They’d fall, there would be tears, and we’d try it again. And, then, after several scraped knees and bruised shins, that magical moment would occur when some little cluster of neurons finally makes the new connections, and voila... they’d be bike riders. All the tears and frustration would be replaced by euphoria.

Clearly a two or three year old, perhaps, is better off with a scooter or balance bike. But, as an old fart, watching 7 and 8 year olds in the park riding ‘balance bikes’, I get the sneaking suspicion that the parents are stretching out a couple-hour process to a couple-month or year process merely because they can’t permit themselves to let the kid wipe out.

Don’t even get me started with swimming...

I trained two kiddos using the parent's method.

Taking the pedals off seemed functional equivalent to a balance bike, and I taught my 4 and 5 year old to ride their bikes the same afternoon.

Same with swimming.

It's kinda goody to judge other parents, tho. A lot of stuff that is easy for me is hard for other folks. But I've been divorced twice, and a lot of folks haven't. So very difficult to judge.

I don't, in general, think that your description of why folks aren't teaching the kiddos using your method is accurate. IME, most folks are just ignorant that it can be done at all.

Didn’t mean to come across as TOO judgmental... obviously I don’t assume to know the details of every parent-child relationship in the world when it comes to bikes.

But, getting back to the article, I’m somewhat dubious about the assumption that humanity just stumbled upon the idea of a balance-bike due to some mental fog that prevented us from considering it.

I think it might be more likely that parenting-styles have changed a bit and there is now a market for a bike-teaching tool that is safer. In other words, I suspect that if you presented a dad in the 1950s with a balance bike and explained it was a tool to more gradually and safely get a child pedaling, he might scratch his head and say, “why would I use that? When the kid is old enough to ride a bike, I’ll be able to show him how in a single afternoon.”

This also happens when there is a younger sibling who shares the bike.

Also, the assumption of balance bikes is that you have lots of time/energy to let the kid learn.

Training wheels make a bike rideable very quickly.

I thought a balance would be great, but neither of my kids liked the balance bike we bought. They rode with training wheels for quite a while.

What got them riding without training wheels was learning to ride Razor scooters. One afternoon when I saw them both riding sweeping S curves on their scooters, I took their training wheels off. At 6 and 7 1/2 yrs, they when from total terror on their bikes to riding comfortably in a few hours. It only took a few rides with me running alongside holding on (continually holding on less each time).

It was amazing.

But riding with training wheels looks miserable... it destroys the smoothness and joy of a bike. I'm surprised kids want to persist with it at all... My kids loved balance bikes (i.e. normal bikes with no pedals) because they don't have the resistance and weird balance issues of a tiny third wheel.

You can start balance bikes at a younger age.

There are great videos of a Swedish three year old on a half pipe on a balance bike! My kids were not so fearless, but my son did a 8 mile ride (flat ex railway line) on a balance bike when he was 3. And before anyone accuses me of pushy parenting... we didn't make him! The plan had always been for my wife to ride with him separately, but he insisted on coming the whole way with his two siblings. It was a really memorable day.

That "the article" was https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/our-brain-typical....

(We merged https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26740085 hither.)

Can you take the pedals off a regular bike to make it into a balance bike? Or is there something special about the balance bike design?

Yes, though you need to lower the saddle as well as remove the pedals.

When I was young, we just used learnt on a regular non-adapted bike. It usually involved a few minor scrapes and bruises, but you learnt very quickly.

IME the the balance bikes are about the same price as a set of training wheels. And also re-usable - my youngest two kids used the same balance bike.

It seems like your answer suffers from the very bias being described, because you don't have to "add" a balance bike to your inventory. You can just "subtract" the pedals off the one you've got.

I don't think a bike with the pedals removed is equivalent to a balance bike. The height matters right?

Kids bikes all have adjustable height seats. Lower it. Done.