Teaching a Child How to Ride a Bike

This one is sooo easy! My son was 6 when he learned, but we took him to a grassy spot that was sloped downhill, gave him a running push for a bit, and then let him go!! I don't even think he fell at all because the balance instinct just took over. Just make sure to keep yelling "pedal, pedal, pedal!" The faster he goes, the easier it will be. If he falls, he's not going to get hurt. If he falls and is scared, be sure he gets right back on and tries again. And to Suzi who said not to teach kids to ride a bike because it's too dangerous??? Her poor, poor children. That's all I can say. How sad.

The smile on your child's face when he learns to ride a bike is absolutely priceless.

First of all-to Suzi who responded above-I guess you shouldn't let your child play on the playground either (high risk of fractures/head injuries), bath (risk of drowning),eat (risk of choking/allergies), and the list goes on. There is a point where we put these kids in God's hands and live our lives, not totally free of worry, but without overwhelming fear of what if?

Bike riding-what worked awesome for us was using the smaller bike, taking off the training wheels, having the child "glide" down the driveway (gravity assists) and just work on finding their balance point. I stood at the end of the driveway as the buffer. They didn't worry about pedaling at all, just trying to balance. I probably did this for a couple of hours. Once they can glide for longer distances, then we went to the sidewalk and worked on the pedaling part-this didn't take much time at all since they had the sense of how to balance, probably another hour...last thing we worked on was starting themselves. Have fun, this technique saves a back ache from leaning down behind them so much!

With my oldest, we brought out the "little bike." It was his 3 year old brother's bike and took the training wheels off. He could touch the ground with both feet, plus with the bike being a bit lighter-weight, he was able to balance it a little easier. Once he got confident on it, then we switched him back to his big bike with no issues. It worked for us. We're going to be trying the "little bike" with my 5 year old today to see if we can get the training wheels off.

Did you hear about the little girl that died on Christmas day? My advice is to just stop, explain to him how dangerous it is and forget about it altogether. Yeah I know. Most won't agree. My daughter is 7 and I've said no way in heck. My husband insisted on teaching my other girls and they rode bikes on the streets with him from time to time. Nothing bad happened but that's not always the case. Is it really worth it in the end if something does happen? I know a lot of people say don't live life like that. But there are so many ways for a kid to get safe exercise and have fun. We just don't live in a safe world unless we create a safe little part of it for ourselves.

Suzi