Balance Bike Benefits: A Better Way to Learn to Ride a Bicycle
Teaching a child to ride a bike can be a frustrating and confusing parenting project. How do you ride a bike? You can describe it. You can do it yourself. You can even expound the physics that make a moving two-wheel vehicle stabile. But until your child "gets" it, they will fall over every time.
Unlike many things our kids learn as they grow, there is no natural instinct or process for learning to ride a bike. For example, even without coaching most kids learn to crawl, stand, and walk on their own.
You do not have to teach children to speak; just wait for them to pass through the critical phases of language development and they will eventually speak whatever language they were exposed to, whether someone consciously tried to teach them or not.
Cycling, on the other hand, is a tricky skill. You cannot "sort of" ride a bicycle. It is not like tying a shoe, where you can go as slow as you need to and then work your way up to full speed. In fact, the slower you go, the harder it is to balance on a bicycle.
In order to learn how to ride a bike, you have to take a leap of faith to cross the period of instability between when you begin pedaling and when the bike begins to move fast enough to get some gyroscopic and steering stability.
This is why training wheels are more of a hindrance than a help in learning to ride on two wheels. Even skilled cyclists have trouble reestablishing two-wheel balance after their weight has fallen on a side wheel. A child riding a bike with training wheels will learn how to pedal but not how to balance. As a result, many children wind up using training wheels for over a year, and it is not unheard of to see a child using training wheels for two or even three years.
So what should parents do to teach their children how to bike? Many parents run behind their children's bikes, helping kids to learn to catch and keep their balance. But children taught with the "running behind the bike method" may have plenty of painful falls and scrapes when mom or dad "lets go" of the bike.
These days there is a much better solution: the balance bike. A balance bike is a two-wheeler with no pedals. Unlike a pedal bike, a balance bike does not require the "leap of faith" over the slow-speed instability with both feet off the ground. With a balance bike, children can scoot along and lift their feet off the ground for as long as they are comfortable.
Balance bikes allow children to learn how to ride a bike without painful falls and scrapes since children can easily put one or both feet back on the ground to catch their balance.
Balance bikes allow children to learn at their own rate, discovering the increase in stability that comes with increasing speeds. Children can practice steering and maneuvering a balance bike without fear of falling. Once a child learns how to balance, the transition from a balance bike to a traditional "big kids" kid is both safe and easy.
About the Author:
Deborah Lillian taught her son how to ride a bike using the Kazam Balance Bike. Kazam is an award winning balance bike for children ages 3 to 6. Kazam makes learning to bike safe, easy and fun.
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