On Feb 4, 4:24*pm, " wrote:
On Feb 4, 9:49*am, "



wrote:
On Feb 4, 2:43*pm, " wrote:

My best friends older son is just a hair over 2 years old. *In the
next few months I expect him to get to the point where he could enjoy
having a bicycle. *The question: *what kind? *Generally speaking I
avoid *mart bikes like the plague, but my LBS doesn't have much geared
to the 2 year old. *Any ideas, suggestions, or tips on what to look
for when purchasing a first bike for this young lad?

TIA

Dan

http://www.earlyrider.com/

I have no direct experience with them, but I might try with my number
3 in a while.

My other son learned on a 12" wheeled BMX style bike when he as 3.
Avoid training wheels at all costs. Some dept-store 12" wheeled bike
have a super high bottom bracket, which should be avoided. Some kids
bikes come with much too tall gearing, and a rear sproket change is
called for. Hand brakes are to be avoided. Adjsuting the bearings on a
new kids' bike is a good idea, as they often are WAY too tight.

Good luck!

Joseph

Cool link, thanks for the heads up. *A pushbike hadn't even crossed my
mind, but it makes sense.

Why avoid training wheels? *There's the obvious aspect of learning
balance, but it seems like if the kid is too young to balance it on
his own the training wheels would get him on the bike sooner, no? *I
guess with a pushbike he can work on balance while pushing himself
along, which could be beneficial. *I've just never heard a strong anti-
training wheels perspective in the past, so I'm curious on the
reasoning.

Any tips from your 3 year old you'd care to share on the learning
curve?

My oldest learned quite quickly when he was 3. We didn't use training
wheels. He wore a jeans jacket that gave me a good grasp on the back.
I walked/jogged alongside steering him via his jacket. This meant he
had to learn to keep the bike under him. It took about 45 minutes.
Gloves makes a big difference because if the kid falls, they don't
scrape up their palms, which in addition to being painful, does not
help most kids' enthusiasm.

Here he is about 1 week after getting the bike working on his spin:

http://arbitrary.org/iagobike.mov
And 2 years later near 5th birthday, he'd moved up to 16" wheels. I
think a suitably sized bike is very important:
http://arbitrary.org/jump.JPG

My daughter took a while longer to learn. This I attibute to the
trikes she used at her pre-school. Steering a trike or a bike with
training wheels is completely different from steering a bike, and
needs to be unlearned. That takes time and makes the kid apprehensive
about the bike because it doesn't work the way they expect it to.

It has been suggested that a small bike with the cranks removed is
also a good way to get the kid scooting around, and I may do that with
my youngest who is only 1.5 now (so I have a while to decide) but I'm
pretty sure I'll hear it about "why does my bike have the pedals taken
off? Put them on!" but with one of those Easyrider bikes that won't be
an issue. I'm a softy I guess, but I also don't want there to be any
conflict around the whole bike riding concept.

Joseph