Riding advice for a 5 year old
I bought my daughter Shilo one of those Strider bikes, the ones without the pedals. She just turned 5 and never showed much interest in riding herself. She loves bikes and knows that I ride but after getting dumped a couple times by her bike with training wheels she was a little spooked.
However, something inspired me to get her a new bike without the pedals on my recent trip to Bootleg Canyon. I’m not sure exactly what got me thinking about it but I was determined to buy one when I got back. When I get home I find the newest issue of Decline Magazine with a whole section dedicated to grom gear.
We went online, found a pink bike and ordered it. A few days later it showed up and we promptly stickered it up good. The next day she went for her first ride on it and she has ridden it every day since. Here are some pics and vids from her adventures:
Shilo showing off her new bike
She has quickly picked up the balance and even had a few spills with no serious injuries. She knows that she can put her feet down and get away from the bike so her fears are easier to overcome. Teach them to balance and turn and then add in the pedaling – it seems so simple that it makes you wonder why we were inflicted with training wheels.
I took out to some local trails yesterday and she got her first taste of trail riding. While we were meandering around we went over the Rules of the Trail, or at least the 5 year old version. Here is my top 3:
1. Keep you eye on the trail. Or, more importantly, don’t look to see who is watching you! Showing off and looking around is a sure way to go down.
2. Don’t worry about going fast, worry about staying smooth. Every time she would “try” to go fast she could never get her balance down and she always ended up going slower than when she was just cruising along trying to be smooth and coast.
3. Bikes are made to have fun on the trail. Sometimes we all need a reminder about that – don’t get caught up trying to look and act like a “real rider”; mountain biking is supposed to be fun.
How about you? If you were going to pass on your greatest pearls of trail riding wisdom to a 5 year old what would it be?
-James Wilson-
Great pics and vids! I just taught my 5 year old to ride a couple of months ago with the pedals (and training wheels) removed. Took her all of a couple of hours. I must say, it’s been one of the proudest moments of my life. My second daughter won’t even touch a bike with training wheels.
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My two year old son has been riding his little Specialized Hotrock for a few months now, he is super fast and getting really stable on it. I think we’re going to have to take the training wheels off to work on balance now, otherwise I think he will start to fortify some of his bad habits. For him our coaching tips have been and remain:
-Watch where you are going: He has crashed hard quite a few times from looking back at us or at something else (trees, cars, etc.)
-Keep 3 points of contact with the bike at all times: I don’t know where he learned no-footers and no-handers from but he thinks it’s pretty cool…until he’s on the ground.
Teaching my son to ride a bike has been and continues to be one of the greatest joys of parenting I have experienced so far. I may feel differently when he starts coming home broken and bloodied but for now I will repress the memories of my own initiation into hardcore biking and try to believe he will have more skill and common sense than his father.
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V Cool. Spent some time with my 5yo daughter on the weekend on the bike. Finally got her off training wheels. She was very excited about that, but #1 was an issue. She was so proud of herself that she spent more time looking at who was watching. I’d add #4 – target fixation. She seemed to pick out every single obstacle and just plow right into it.
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My 2 1/2 year old is starting his 2nd season on his Norco run bike. Last year shortly after he turned 2, all he wanted to do was go down hills. He would give a big push from the top and coast down. By the end of the year he was tackling some easier rooty terrain and he was loving it. Living in Northern Canada we have long winters so to get his fix we were setting up teeter totters and small jumps in the garage. Already this year he has pulled off an 8km trail ride, some of which was through terrain my wife won’t ride. The problem I am now running into is he is overconfident in his skills and he is no longer paying attention on paved trails and had a few bad wipe outs this weekend. Seems if he isn’t challenged he loses focus. Not much more I can add to the points you identified other than don’t push them past their comfort level. If they are scared to try something new, don’t make them try it or they will resent something that you are trying to make an ejoyable family experience.
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Back then I gave my two-year old daughter a ‘walking-bike’ like you gave your daughter. She learned how to keep her balance, steering, and keeping momentum. When she became three I gave her a normale bike and only had the side wheels on it for like a week, just to learn to pedal and then sometimes take the side wheels off just to get a feel for it. After like two wheels took her to a safe fire road (not too rull, and smooth), and after like a couple of minutes I watched her proudly cycle away. Of course I never pushed her to do this… and let her decide if and when she wanted to do this.
I believe training-wheels can actually work against them when learning to ride a bike, first they give a false sense of stability, when leaning too much into the wheels the bike can fall over and also, with side wheels the bike steers like a car, which is of course totally different and useless when learning to ride a bike. It’s probably better to use something like a trike to get used to pedalling, and never use side-wheels.
Now, my two year old son now is taking his turn on the walking-bike, I have to run quite fast to keep up with him, and he gets a kick out of walking to a small hill and then feet in the air ride downhill… He can probably ride a bike within a few months, but I think I’ll postpone this a bit, because he would be too young to ride across the streets and won’t have any sense of danger.
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Btw. in the video Shilo does a really smooth drop, the way she did that, very clever!
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I got my kid a run bike and he does well on it…I just have a problem getting him on a bike with pedals. He just does not want to pedal. He is only 3. I think he is trying to get a new bike out of me. The key is if the child does not want to do ride it will be no fun for you or the kid.
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Ok james, she has balance not time for pedals!
Thanks for posting this. I learned with my daughter that training wheels are a waste of time. They become dependant on them and then lean. Tricycles can teach them how to pedal and then on to 2 wheels.
at about age 3 1/2 I got my daught a 16″ bike and it was a little big for her (barely) so she struggled a bit.
Then, what I did is buy a cheapy target 12″ bike for her to learn on. After about 20 minutes she was riding and then jumped straight to the 16″.
Then she started showing off and I had here doing a teater totter I build and is bit riding a 20″ at age 6.
Here is my own link that documents my daughter learning.
http://www.viddler.com/explore/jschwartz/videos/4/
John
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