My friend had a pedal-free “balance bicycle”
that her toddler used. The kid could
barely walk but she would scoot around like a mini Dale Earnhardt. Apparently balance bikes are all the rage in
Germany. The beauty, my friend
explained, is that having learned to balance on their behinds, the kids
effortlessly transition to two wheel bicycles avoiding the whole troublesome training
wheel stage. This is the best way to learn how to ride a
bike. Just not for my kids.
To make a pedal-free bike, you can just temporarily
remove the pedals from a regular child’s bike.
However, to give my child the utmost advantage, I splurged on a
beautiful, European, wooden, spoke-free, pedal-free balance bike for my
daughter. She wasn’t interested. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. She was excited for about 2 minutes, until
she tried it and couldn’t balance on it.
Then she actively disliked it. Many tears, months and arguments later, I
bought her a bike with training wheels.
“What’s the hardest thing about learning to
ride a bike?”
“The pavement.” That’s the punch line I learned as a kid, but
it turns out there is something harder.
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