Take the Pedals Off the Bike

Re:Take the Pedals Off the Bike by mroset on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @11:51AM (#42699895)

My daughter started using a balance bike around 18 months. By the time she was 2.5, she zoomed around on it and had started asking about pedals. We got her a pedal bike two months before she turned 3, with the expectation that we might have to take the pedals off for a few more months. Instead, within a few days (maybe 2 total hours of practice?) she was riding confidently and totally by herself--at not quite 3 years old.

It's so different than the challenging, scary attempts to remove training wheels when my siblings and I were 5 or 6 years old. One of those things where I didn't realize the science and tradition on teaching kids to ride bikes could change so dramatically within two decades!

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Re:Take the Pedals Off the Bike by throwaway2037 on Wednesday January 15, 2025 @02:37AM (#42708355)

Wow, what a story. You daughter was riding a regular bike before three. Is she physically talented in other ways? That seems exceptional!

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Re:Take the Pedals Off the Bike by scraplab on Wednesday January 15, 2025 @02:42AM (#42708390)

All three of my kids were riding full bikes around 3 years old, having used a balance bike for 12-18 months previous. I don’t think my kids are exceptional - balance bikes work wonders!

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Re:Take the Pedals Off the Bike by danielbln on Wednesday January 15, 2025 @03:56AM (#42708836)

Same story here. My kiddo rode her bike at 3 easily, and used a balance bike before that.

Me on the other hand, I had a tough time back when I was a kid on training wheels, only really grokking it at 6 or so.

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Re:Take the Pedals Off the Bike by throwaway2037 on Wednesday January 15, 2025 @08:26PM (#42719822)

    > only really grokking it at 6 or so

This reads like a carbon copy of my experience! When I learned to ride a bike at 6, it was so hard. I had to practice for a long time with my father. These balance bikes really are a game-changer.

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Re:Take the Pedals Off the Bike by mroset on Wednesday January 15, 2025 @11:33AM (#42713128)

She doesn't have very athletic parents, so she regularly exceeds my expectations for her, but she's not a particular standout otherwise!

Probably the more relevant factor: we replaced one of cars with a cargo bike when she was 15 months old, so she does 1500+ miles a year "on" a bike, and a tiny fraction of that in a car (we live in a totally car-centric US city, so this is pretty out of the norm). Bikes are the fabric of her daily life so she is really, really motivated to spend time on a bike.

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Re:Take the Pedals Off the Bike by matsemann on Wednesday January 15, 2025 @03:43AM (#42708753)

Yeah, ironically training wheels was a bad idea. It learns you the motions of pedaling, but not the core skill: balancing.

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