Is Your Child Ready to Ride a Bike with No Training Wheels

What is the right age for your child to ride a bike?  Is it 5, 6 or 7?  Traditional wisdom would say a child is not ready to ride until they are 5 or 6.  I will be at a location promoting bike training classes and I will hear parents pass by with their child and quietly whisper “your not ready for that, you still have training wheels on”.  It makes me think, who is not
ready for it because it is certainly not the child.  Training wheels are what everyone does but I believe it is a huge disservice to your child to use them.  

 

Who decided when your child should be walking?  It definitely was not a date the parent set out.   A child will walk when they are ready if given the opportunity to learn the right skills. 

 

Parents help encourage the skills by:

q      Using a jumpie seat to gain leg strength

q      holding them up again strength in their legs and sense balance

q      letting the child hold their fingers and walking them around or
using a walker

By taking small progressive steps a child develops the skills to walk.  It is not from lying on the floor to up and walking.  One day the child put all the steps together and starts walking.  Walking is one of the milestones in life.  What excitement the parents, grandparents, friends and neighbors feel.  The child also has a significant sense of accomplishment. 

But what if parents just arbitrarily put walking as a skill that should not happen until a child reaches say 5.  Even though the child may have the capability the parents still make the child use a stabilizing walker to walk around.  Sounds absurd, yes, but that is what happens with children learning to ride a bicycle with training wheels. 

Riding a bike with “NoTraining Wheels” is another life milestone that produces many benefits

•  Positive Self-Esteem
   
•  Healthy Parent/Child
   Interaction
•  Physical Activity
   
•  Many years of fun
   riding experiences as a family

 

So why is it parents allow a physically ready child to ride a bike with training wheels (stabilizers or crutches)?  I believe it is because the parents don’t know the incremental steps to teaching a child to ride.  I will share all of the steps through a series of articles.  I hope it will help make you comfortable and capable of teaching your child to ride.    

Step 1 – How do you know your child is ready to start learning to ride a bike with “No Training Wheels”?

Step 2 – How do you know you have the right bike?

Step 3 – Bike Safety

Step 3 – What are the incremental steps to Learning to Ride?

Please let me know if you have any questions?

God Bless,

 

Daddy Bit