Reply to Stick with balance bike or succumb to pedaled bike with training wheels?

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Reply to "Stick with balance bike or succumb to pedaled bike with training wheels?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was also skeptical of the balance bike and had basically given up on it, then a few months after our first "lessons" with it, I suggested taking it out on a walk (figuring I'd wind up carrying it most of the time) and DD took off on it. It was amazing. I don't know if her body/brain just put together the stuff we'd been trying to show her previously, or if nothing we said mattered and she just needed to figure it out on her own, but suddenly it was her favorite thing.

She's now 4.5 and we are thinking about getting a pedal bike with training wheels because she's outgrowing the balance bike. We are honestly not in a hurry either way -- she also loves her scooter. If she weren't getting too tall for the balance bike, I think we'd stick with it for another year even because she's so quick on it.

So I guess my suggestion is to give it a couple months and then pull it out and see if anything has changed. One of the best things about the balance bike is that it is very easy for them to stop on it, which is great for teaching safety in the neighborhood. The coordination of stopping a pedal bike is more complicated and I know it's going to stress me out for a bit once we switch.[/quote]

If she's great on a balance bike, you may not need the training wheels. Once my kids were super competent on the balance bike they switched over to regular pedal bikes seamlessly -- no learning curve at all. It was like magic. They got on and pedaled off.[/quote]

PP here. That would be awesome! She knows how to pedal from her trike days but I do feel like she might need a refresher. But most pedal bikes for this size come with training wheels whether you want them or not, so we'll see.

Teaching a child to ride a bike has been a funny experience for me because I am from a huge family and got lost in the shuffle and my parents forgot to get me a bike or teach me to ride. I was like 11 and my dad asked why I couldn't just ride my bike to school and I said I didn't know how and that's when I learned. Oops! So in my mind learning to ride a bike at 4 or 5 is like some kind of miracle.[/quote]

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