Learning to Ride a Bike

A bike with four wheels?Back in the days when my kids were young, they each got their first "bike" with two wheels aged about 3. But in truth, it wasn't actually a bike with two wheels... it had 4! Sticking out the sides at the back were a pair of "stabilisers" or "training wheels". They come fitted to virtually all 12" wheel kids bikes, most 14" wheel a a number of 16" wheel bikes.The typical method employed by families when they want their child to learn to ride a bike is to stick them on one of these 4 wheel bikes and wait until mum or dad thinks "time we got them stabilisers off!" or the child starts badgering at which point...some try taking one stabiliser off first and leave one on... a surefire recipe for disasterormost take both off and mum or dad spends the next 3 or 4 weeks bent double running behind holding onto the sadle trying to keep up! Five minutes in, you are worn out, your back is shot and you give it up and promise to do some more with them tomorrow. With my son, I took this approach and fortunately I was lucky in that he got his balance pretty quickly so I only had a week of an hour a day chasing him up and down the road!I've heard people suggest that the stabilisers be raised on both sides so that the wheels don't touch the ground when the bike is being sat on forcing the child to learn to balance. In reality all this does is to teach your child to ride leant over, resting on one stabiliser. Some cheap kids bikes have such badly fitted stabilisers that the bike can only ever run leant over.