Reply to So honest question-what exactly is the point of a balance bike?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sigh - a balance bike is a regular bike with the pedals removed.

And regular bikes all come with adjustable seats so[b] getting a bike for a 2 year old to use as a "balance bike" that he/she can also use as a 4 year old is easy[/b] but maybe the people who can't remove the pedals can't figure out how to adjust the seat height either.  My kids have used each of their bikes for about 4 years so this thing about needing to buy a balance bike or lots of bikes for your kids is just parents with more money than common sense.

Leaving that aside the people who teach bike classes for kids spend most of the class with the kids learning to balance, steer and brake on a bike with the pedals removed so it in fact is a great way to teach a kid to ride a bike.

And I know this from experience - my first kid could not ride a bike - we spent 3 frustrating years working on it though it certainly wasn't because it was taxing to run alongside a kid learning to ride.  Took the REI bike class with him and he and everyone else in the class (most of whom were there for the same reason I was and this included a couple of kids pushing 10) all rode their bikes with pedals on the first time they tried it after spending a couple of hours doing different exercises on a bike with the pedals removed and my son never had qualms again about getting on a bike.

FWIW his younger brother a couple of years later fell exactly once after getting a shove from me and figured it out after the 2nd shove so I never had to remove his pedals but they are on opposite ends of the athleticism spectrum so how your kid does is probably more a reflection of their abilities than your instruction.[/quote]

This is not true. It has to be small enough to easily put their feet down on the ground. A two year old and a four year old are different sizes. Buying up in size for a kid learning to ride a bike is a mistake, in my experience, and bad advice.[/quote]

+1. I have one and had success and there is no way my DD could have used her new 16 inch wheel regular bike when she was using her balance bike. The seat at its lowest is higher than the balance bike at it's highest. Unless your kid was freakishly tall at 2 and stagnated for four years, or is very short and didn't grow than I can't see how you could possibly use the same bike for 3-4 years in a row.[/quote]

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