Yesterday I was a very proud father. Poppy managed to ride her bike; peddling, steering, balancing and braking all without the assistance of stabilisers. In fact she’s never used stabilisers. You may recall that about two years ago I bought her a balance bike (pictured left). After an uncertain start, she took to using it like a natural but given that she’s grown somewhat since then I figured I’d buy her an early birthday present of a new bike. Two weeks ago we took a trip to Halfords and purchased a pink 16” girl’s mountain bike. The Carrera Luna is pretty well specified for a child’s bike featuring an aluminium frame, front fork suspension and chunky off-road tyres. We got the bike home and after setting it up properly
(thanks Halfords… you need to train your bike guys to tune and balance the brakes properly) Poppy took it for a spin. She was very nervous given that it was much bigger than the balance bike, but she managed to scoot along, and over the next few evenings got the hang of balancing like before. I gradually worked her up to keeping one foot on a pedal and then getting her to balance for longer and longer runs (downhill is obviously easier for this). Yesterday she took the bike to the village’s play area, balancing the bike on the way there. Once we got there I convinced her to briefly put both feet on the pedals whilst rolling down the hill just to see if she could do it. Well, she could and promptly pedalled off.
When I purchased the original balance bike there wasn’t much choice. Most of them were either wooden affairs or very expensive. I opted for the Hudora which included a steel frame, rear brake and chunky air filled tyres. Now, given that there’s a far greater choice of similar bikes around now I can’t recommend this model. The brake was next to useless because once the tyres were inflated, they would warp the plastic wheels unevenly making it impossible to calibrate the brakes accurately. Also, the brake calliper would catch on Poppy’s legs as she pushed herself along. Anyway, if you are interested in balance bikes in general, click through to the Hudora one on Amazon using the link to the right and see the others they have on offer.
To take a look at Poppy’s new bike at Halfords, click on this link here.
It’s time for one of my most important fatherly duties… Poppy needs to learn to ride a bike. So.. after seeing a few odd looking pedal-less bikes around last year I turned to good old Google for information. It turns out there’s a new and less painful way to learn, the way of the Balance Bike. Riding a bike requires a number of learned skills to be performed all at once. You have the pedals of course needing strength and co-ordination, there’s the all important brakes, you need to steer the thing, and most importantly there’s balance. The story (unverfied and probably not true!) goes that a German family noticed the ability of their 18-month old to scoot along and balance on a two-wheeled toy scooter and thought, “ooh, that’s clever”. The idea was refined in to an actual bike with no pedals and sold in vast numbers. Children were able to quickly pick up the idea of using a balance bike, pushing themselves along with their feet and eventually scooting along with their legs up for further distances. Once they are comfortable with this then most children were given a normal child’s bike without stabilisers and off they went. Stabilisers are a pain in the bum. They are dangerous when cornering and they add an extra learning curve (and tears) when they are removed. Riding a bike with stabilisers teaches bike steering in the wrong way. When you steer a bike, most of the work is done by leaning one way or the other and correcting your balance. Moving the handlebar just increases the curve of your turn. When you ride with stabilisers you are not balancing and turns are based purely on the direction you point the front wheel. Removing stabilisers from a child’s bike means they need to learn to balance whilst pedalling AND learn to balance while steering at the same time… hence the sight of thousands of dads up and down the country during summer months running behind their children holding on to the back of the bike. Crash. Ouch.
