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]I think the balance bike fad is really dumb and something that’s become popular because it’s seen as European. American kids used to grow up with training wheels. I think training wheels are great because you immediately get to experience the beauty of a bicycle: speed and actually transporting yourself somewhere faster than you can walk. Balance bikes are awkward and slow compared to a bike with training wheels and just aren’t a lot of fun, as your smart daughter has quickly figured out. If it were so difficult to go from training wheels to a bike generations of kids would never have learned, and yet we all did, with much more enthusiasm than had we all been subjected to balance bikes.

Tl;dr: get her a real bike with training wheels even if you lose cred with the other upper middle class parents.[/quote]

I thought this (well, not the seeming European part, but the "I learned on training wheels and it was fine" part) and I bought my older kid a bike with training wheels. It took her forever to get off training wheels, including eventually taking a class--where they taught them to ride by removing the pedals and essentially turning their bikes into balance bikes. She got it in 1 afternoon after 2 years of struggling.

So we went the balance bike route with our younger kid and he went straight from balance bike to regular bike without ever needing training wheels. He was riding a bike much earlier than his friends who went the training wheels route.

I'm not sure where awkward and slow comes from either. Kids are speed demons on those things once they figure them out! I mean, sure, they're not long distance transport, but no bike being ridden by a 4 year old is![/quote]

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