Remember how you learned to ride yourself? Remember how your knees were broken and thought that you could never master this science in your life? However, everything turned out to be not so difficult and the childhood experience is remembered with an involuntary smile on his lips.
Life experience testifies: if a person in childhood did not learn how to swim or ride a bicycle, then in adulthood he with great difficulty masters these skills, or even he can’t learn this at all. Therefore, you can teach children to ride a bike from a very tender age.
The first bicycle for a child is an extremely interesting toy, but not all children can immediately ride a bicycle.
Learning to ride a tricycle 🙂
A year and a half is quite enough age for the first attempt to ride a tricycle for kids. The bicycle must meet the baby’s growth and basic requirements: a comfortable seat and steering wheel, stability, maneuverability, sufficient pedal lever, ease of travel, quality of the constituent materials. The bicycle must not have sharp corners, plastic elements that can be scratched or broken off and swallowed.
The bicycle should be bright as a toy – to attract the attention of the child and he wanted to ride. At first, of course, you have to bother and steer for the child, but very soon he will have a desire to move relatively independently. Find a suitable place – for starters, this can be done right in the apartment. When the baby has already sat on the bike, just enough several times, holding the child by the hips, demonstrate to him the work of his own legs. Shoes should be wide soled and not too smooth so that the feet do not slip.
When the baby stays steady in the saddle, you can start short trips. A specially adapted wand available on many models of tricycles will help a lot, which you can push your child in difficult places and steer if necessary. The child quickly gets used to this type of transport. Your only need will be to carefully monitor the route and speed of movement, “road conditions” and the technical condition of the vehicle. Often tricycles are equipped with music and lighting devices that can give you a good “bashing”, but children like it.
The easiest way to teach your child to ride a two-wheeled bicycle is as follows. The saddle is mounted so that, sitting on it, the child can freely get the floor with his legs slightly bent at the knees. Remove the pedals. At first, the child rides a bicycle like a scooter, pushing off the ground with his feet, and learns maneuvering and braking techniques. And although at first the young cyclist will ride somewhat ineptly and awkwardly, he will gain confidence quickly. After some time, slightly raise the saddle so that it can tear off its legs from the ground for a long time, without experiencing discomfort. As you can see, during the educational process, parental intervention is minimal.
And this gives pride to the novice cyclist: he learned on his own! The more confident he will ride, the less anxiety for parents. After you come to the conclusion that your child is confidently “sitting in the saddle”, give him an exam in order to test his straight-line driving skills and maneuvering. If he manages to pass the exam “excellent”, feel free to pedal. Special balancing wheels, which often come with a children’s bike, help a lot. True, their adjustment quickly gets off and in general the attached wheels are quite fragile. When the child learns to maintain balance, additional wheels can be removed.