Comment by bunderbunder
Comment by bunderbunder 4 days ago
Agreed. We didn't get onto the balance bike tip until my older kid was a little older, but my younger one started on their older sibling's balance bike as more-or-less a toddler and was riding a bike with pedals by age 4. With basically zero frustration.
Watching peers of theirs who used training wheels, I've realized they're a trap. The mechanics of how a bike actually steers are completely different when you put training wheels on it. Whenever a third wheel is touching the ground (something that seems to be hard to avoid while turning, from what I've seen) it starts to steer like a trike instead of a bicycle. So transitioning from that to riding without training wheels is doubly difficult, because you also have to un-learn the instincts and muscle memory you developed with training wheels.
Transitioning from a balance bike to one with pedals is much easier because the main instinct they'll be taking from it - putting a foot on the ground when you get into trouble - remains useful. It naturally helps prevent skinned knees during the transition period.
Exactly this. The article has the right conclusion but invents a nonsense explanation. The truth is that bicycles counter-steer at any reasonable rolling speed - to go right, you nudge the steering to the left, which causes the bike to start falling to the right and then steer into that fall. People often find this hard to believe, even experienced riders, but it is easily tested. The problem is that training wheels turn a bicycle into a tricycle, which steers in the opposite way - to go right you steer to the right. So kids learn that and then you take the training wheels off and the first attempt to steer immediately causes a nasty fall because of steering the wrong way. I made this mistake teaching my first to ride, and she hurt herself and never really liked bikes after that. Seeing it happen, I had an epiphany (eventually) and just took the pedals off that bike for my second, who had the experience described elsewhere in this thread and loved bikes thereafter.