This article looks into ways to teach your child to learn to ride a bike. First we look at what to consider before starting to teach and then teaching a child to learn using stabilisers on a bike


First of all…

Don’t teach a child to ride on a bike that is too big or too small for them. If your child is learning to ride on a bike that is too small, then pedalling and steering will be difficult and if the bike is too big, then stopping and starting will be dangerous. So to find out more about finding the right sized bike for your child visit this article on bicycle fitting for children, here at Cycling on BellaOnline.

Next…

Work out where would be best for your child to start learning. Keep well away from traffic and it’s best to select a grassy place to practice on because it’ll be much better for them to topple onto grass rather than hard tarmac.

The Basic Skills

There are basic skills that your child will be learning to develop when riding a bike. These are balance and co-ordination through steering, pedalling, starting and stopping.

Using Stabilisers

Using stabilisers on a child’s bicycle are great to start off learning how to steer and pedal and stop without having the difficult task of learning to balance at the same time. It’s a great introduction to using a bicycle by first applying stabilisers onto the bike.

There is one important consideration however, that the child may become too accustomed to them and learn to rely on them too much if they are used for a long time. When the stabilisers are finally removed on the bike it will no doubt prove to be a traumatic experience for the child, really hindering their learning further and therefore making learning to cycle without stabilisers much more difficult.

So when using stabilisers, it’s important to observe that as your child grows in confidence in cycling: pedalling and steering, you can slowly raise the stabilisers and keep raising them as your child's co-ordination on handling the bike seems fluent and then to eventfully taking them off. That way your child is much more prepared for the next task to learn to balance solely on their bike more effectively and easily.