We finally took the training wheels of Littletree’s bike! And the pedals.
That might sound a little strange, but I have come to realise that training wheels were a really bad idea. After two years of riding this bike, she still couldn’t really ride effectively, even *with* the training wheels on.
This is a kid who could, sitting on her bike, with training wheels, perfectly still, on flat ground, not going anywhere, and still manage to fall off and topple the whole bike over.
Basically, training wheels mean that you can never get the hang of balancing. I found out in Europe it’s common to get training bikes that don’t have any pedals – kids who are just about big enough to start riding get these bikes and just coast along on their feet. Thus they learn to balance, and how to lean into curves, which is the tricky part. Then they get onto a pedal bike and can ride pretty much right away.
So after many long discussions, and another agonising play-date with friends who can ride normal bikes, Littletree agreed that she wanted to take off both the training wheels and the pedals.
She was a bit wobbly at first, but in the distance from our house to the village – about 500M, she made more progress at riding than she has in the past 2 years on training wheels!
Yay!
We think that after a week of riding days, she’ll be ready for pedals again and a fully-fledged cyclist :D Then I reckon she’ll be ready to move into her own apartment ;)
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lol Go LT! A friends dd has one of those bikes and they are a big riding family.
ReplyDeletetraining wheels are just plain dumb! I am a complete convert to the balance bike method. My younger two were competent two-wheelers at ages 4 and 3. The older two were both 6-7 before they got to enjoy that!
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