I decided to create this article on how to teach your kid to ride a bike because I thought looking up How to Ride a Bike would be pretty straight forward. Nope. Little did I know there there are many different ways a child can learn to ride a bike. What way did we choose to teach our kid to ride the bicycle? The good old fashioned way, put him on and give him a shove. Well not exactly that way. Let me explain.
Ok, so teaching our kid to ride a bike involved a little more than just giving him a shove. I did run up and down the street trying to hold him up for a while. But I’ll tell you, it really didn’t take long for our four year old to learn to ride a bike. I was actually amazed at just how fast he caught on. We really only spent about an hour teaching him to ride his bike before he was riding on his own.
Our child has very good balance and coordination and that played a huge part in how easy it was for him to learn to ride a bike. A good way to judge your child’s balance is to determine if they can hop on one foot, skip…stuff like that. I knew that my child had excellent balance when I came into the living room to find my then 2 year old child standing on the handlebars of his inside play bike. That was kind of a tip off.
Other children will take a little more work. There are some programs that you can put your child in if you feel that he or she isn’t getting the hang of riding their bike even though you have been spending a lot of time teaching them. One of these programs is a day camp called Lose The Training Wheels. I think the name explains what the purpose of this day camp is. If your child is finding it tough to learn to ride a bike, having instructors with a little more experience at teaching bike riding could be a pretty good idea. Lose The Training Wheels or any program like that is better for children who may have some physical or mental disabilities and would need a more experienced teacher.
There is a new bike available called the Gyrobike. This Gyrobike is specifically designed to teach someone to ride a bike. This bike uses the natural force of gyroscopic precession to recenter the rider’s weight underneath the bike as he or she falls. In short, a child can learn to ride a bike without training wheels and without their parent having to run up and down the street with them.
My opinion? All of us parents could use the exercise of running up and down the street with our child. Also I think that falling down on their bike is a huge part of a child learning to ride a bike. They need to fall, get up, brush themselves off and get back on.
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July 12th, 2007 at 7:43 pm
Nice riding Jake. I can’t wait until you grow up and I can show you these videos.
November 17th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
Take the training wheels and pedals off. Tell them to push along with their feet and try to “glide” by hanging their feet up in the air. When they’re able to do that with ease, put the pedals back on and tell them to rest their feet on the pedals while gliding. They will figure out the rest and you get to look like Mr. Miyagi.
No charge - dB
June 19th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
I am not a mom, i am a big sister. I just have to say i’m 10 and the only one who is mad that my little sister is still a 4 weeler! She is 7. We have done every trick in the book and nothing has worked. Send my mom some advise
love,
Rachael Farber
July 2nd, 2008 at 1:22 am
[...] a beginner children’s face painter should follow is… practice. It’s just like teaching your child to ride a bike. It takes lots of practice. You can read books about children’s face painting and you can [...]
July 25th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
my 3 and a half year old has now been riding a bike for two weeks. it was so simple ,he never had any stabilizers on in the first place . simple way is to make sure that they have a walking bike (bike no pedals) at a young age . in a few months they are all ready lifting their feet and rolling everywhere then it is a simple transition to a proper bike ,but make sure it is the same size as there walking one