Horace wrote:
I'm getting back into recreational cycling after a long hiatus, and my
oldest son (12) wants to ride with me almost all the time. I enjoy his
company when we ride in our immediate neighborhood, but he's bugging me
about riding on some heavily trafficked streets outside the
neighborhood.
He has fairly good bike handling skills for his experience level, though
he often has trouble keeping up. I'm most concerned about him riding
safely in traffic. A tandem would solve the problem, but the cost is
prohibitive at present. I've considered buying a beater MTB (like his)
and taking him to some area trails, but I suspect he's attracted to the
"adventure" of really going somewhere on his bike.
Anyone have experience in this area? If so, was there a particular age
when you encouraged your kid to ride along? Any tips would be greatly
appreciated.

A tandem (or tandem attachment) is a great idea for long distance hauls
where the distances done by an adult are just beyond a child's stamina
levels, particularly day after day touring. But for general riding, I
think supervised soloing is the way to go for long term results.

Our 7 year old just learned to bike this summer. She's doing remarkably
well for her age but she's not safe to roll unsupervised in traffic
because she's unpredictable and doesn't have good traffic judgement
skills. Most of our family riding is done with her riding between her
two parents - usually Mamma in front, her and Poppa following.

Two things we're working on with her is to "be responsible" for her own
street crossings. What I'm trying to discourage is having her play
"follow the leader", seeing me cross a street and assuming because I
went across without a problem, she can follow without looking. She did
have an incident this summer because she saw her father cross a
residential street. Just as he went across, a car turned onto the street
and she scooted across. Fortunately, the driver was alert and braked
with plenty of time and distance to spare. When I talked to her about
it, it was very clear that she can't comprehend stopping distances for a
vehicle or judge their speed. Your child, being older, probably has
better judgement in this area.

The other thing we're doing is having her tell us what to do next.
"We're going to stop at the stop sign and turn right after we check for
cars".... etc. We also stop before starting off on a "tricky bit" to
make sure she understands how we plan to cross the bridge, or navigate
the upcoming intersection. It gives her a chance to see our otherwise
invisible thought processes.

Other than that, it's been a lot of practice sessions. She'll go out
with her dad to practise making left hand turns or work on some other
skill set. The practice sessions seem to coincidentally end at a local
ice-cream shop but I'm sure that's just happenstance grin

I did find information at
http://www.johnforester.com/Articles/education.htm that was very useful
in helping us teach cycling safety to our daughter. It gave me a good
insight into what she was capable of dealing with in terms of perception
and reaction.

As far as keeping up, a couple of comments. One, we've both had to cut
our speed when we're with her because she's not capable of travelling as
fast as we do and we've had to experiment a lot with gears etc to keep
our pace down to her level. Second, both of us now use a rear view
mirror on our bikes, not to watch traffic but so the leading parent can
keep an eye on the back of the pack. Finally, because she's growing so
fast, we've had to raise her bike seat twice this summer so she's
getting good extension on her legs. Everytime we've done this, her
average speed has gone up about 1 kph, so she's getting closer to our
normal speeds.

I know this sounds like a lot of effort but it isn't really. We enjoy
biking as a family and I know I'll feel a lot calmer when she makes her
first solo trip to friend's house because I have a very good idea of
what her skills are.

We've also encouraged her to define her own goals to give her a sense of
accomplishment. One was "biking to the downtown", another was "biking on
a downtown street", the next one is "biking to school". We've done a bit
of "stage management" like doing the "downtown street" on a Sunday
morning but I think it's important for kids to attain their own goals to
build their confidence.




--
Insanity has its price -- Please have exact change.

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