Comment by deltarholamda

I took the pedals off for one of my kids (the others did the training wheels), and it worked quite well.

The only downside was that he figured out that if he got wobbly, he could stick his legs down and a bit out and it would help him stabilize by lowering the center of gravity. That seemed great at the time, but when the pedals were put back on, he would still use this trick when he got wobbly, which isn't a great instinct. Took a bit of time to train that out of him.

But in the end, it was faster than the training wheels, and it's cheaper than buying a specialized balance bike.