Riding Bikes

Wonderful husband and I both love riding bikes. While he goes almost every weekend to one of the off road trails around our house, I usually only get to ride my bike around the neighborhood a few times a year. The obvious solution? Teach the kids to ride bikes. Since my kids are short, we started by seeing which tricycles they could sit on and still reach the pedals. While this seems simple, there was only one option that met the requirement.

This was one of the more successful attempts. Turns out this model isn't very stable. If they kids turned the handles while moving the entire thing fell over. I'm sure part of it is because they had to sit so far forward in order to reach the pedals. However, when you fall off every minute, it's not much fun. They gave up quickly.

Our first solution was to get helmets. This didn't help with the balance and we needed another solution. I had heard of balance bikes for a couple of years. They are just like regular bikes, but without pedals. Kids learn to balance, steer, and just push with their feet. These had great reviews and fewer injuries. However, most balance bikes cost more than $200/each. That wasn't going to happen. Then, we found some cheap balance bikes at Wal-mart. After buying them online for in store pick up, it only took us 4 trips to 3 different stores to find 2 in stock.

The first few trips on the balance bikes were entertaining. The kids basically just walked with them around the neighborhood. However, they didn't fall and get hurt! Once the kids grow tall enough to sit on the seats, these will be great. (Poor kids, they really are short.)

They are happy and ask to go biking a few times a month. We ended up selling the tricycles and keeping these instead. I highly recommend balance bikes to anyone with young kids. It teaches important skills that tricycles and bikes with training wheels don't. They are safer because the kids have their feet down already and even my tiny kids learned how to get on and off of the bikes without getting hurt.