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6yo girl rapidly outgrowing her single speed bike.
I'm tempted to go for gears this time, but I have little faith she'll be able to understand them, and even less faith she'll have mechanical sympathy.
So gears: Yes or no?
In about the same place with our eldest. Have gone for an early rider with 3 speed gearbox or her next bike as I think three gears will be easier to understand and simpler to maintain.
Yes - but with low expectations 😉
I'm about to get our soon to be five year old a bike with gears, probably seven. I suspect she'll up in the middle of the cassette for a while until she figures out the benefits! Do they need mechanical sympathy when there's no front mech and you have a chain strong enough to handle adult legs?
Our 6yr oldLad has gears, I recommend it as it gives access to hillier places but they can still pick up speed on the flat.
Ours is basically a multi option single-speed, we stop and select the gear required for the ‘next bit’. He’s a long way off autonomy but it doesn’t seem to matter on the fun ratio. If he’s on his own, gear 3 seems To be his favourite.
My 2 got gears on their 20" bikes, think they both got on that about 6 years old. They get used to the gears after a while.
You will spend a fair amount of time shouting FINGER or THUMB a lot. Unless you get gripshift that is, but ours had trigger shift straight away.
Yes, do it. Otherwise by the time she's 8 she'll be drinking beer, growing a beard and getting tattoos.
But yes, because it doesn't take kids long to understand stuff like this, she won't break it, and it'll make it easier to start getting her riding further. Just try to pick whichever type of shifter she gets on with best. We found trigger shifters way better than grip shifters, but YMMV.
My 6 (7 in a month) year old has just got gears on a 20" wheeled hotrock and he's loving it. 6 Speed gripshift, he's figured out which one makes him fast, and which one lets him go uphill quicker. Not too good on the mechanical sympathy side of things, but he's only 6 (and the kit is fairly bullet proof).
All in I reckon they're great.
My 6yr old has 6 gears on his Scott Scale, took less than a ride to get used to them and he can ride much further compared to his singlespeed Frog.
My 5 year old got a Frog 52 with thumb shifters for Christmas. We went out on Christmas day and within 10 minutes he was using all of the gears. He still has not quite worked out the fact that he has to change before he stops if he wants to start in a different gear, but apparently that is where I come in to lift it up and spin the pedals whilst he changes to where he wants to be.
As people say above, it massively opens up the range of ground he can now cycle on.
My 5 year old has a Commencal Ramones. It is not light. As a result, he picked up on the benefit of gears pretty quick.
My lad moved onto a Frog 52 with gears the Christams after he was 4, so that'd make him 4yrs 8 months old.
He took a while to figure out that you can only change them when you're moving, but after the first couple of rides he was absolutely fine.
He's also got a Frog 58 cross / road bike with Microshift road style shifters, he can change gear on that now his little fingers reach the paddles 😀
He's not 6 until April BTW
My 6yo moved to a geared bike - she's had no problem what so ever sussing the gears out.
Same can't be said for her 11yo brother though.....
Both of mine have been fine with gears from the age of 6. 8 speed rear with finger/thumb shifters. My lad has taken to it immediately, his sister used to obsess at looking at the numbered window a little bit too much. After the second crash she learned 😀
My eldest was 6 in December, had his 9speed orbea since about October.. He's absolutely fine with it, just had to tell him if its hard to peddle thumb press, if it's to easy finger pull.
Didn't take long.
My daughter was 5 when she got gears. She's got an Orbea MX20 which she loves. Only real problem is she moans her thumb hurts. I think she's pressing the lever for all her life. I'm going to put the bike on the stand so she can play with the gears and see how they work.
6 yr old with 7 speed rapidfire. It took a few rides to get it but he got it - too hard to pedal = thumb click, too easy to pedal = finger click.
My eldest got gears at about 6-1/2, didn't get on with triggers, gripshift suited her brain a bit better, tended to stick it in a pretty low gear and spin, still does so two years on, youngest is 6 in a couple of weeks, she'll just be inheriting her sisters old hotrock 20, I fully expect more low gear spinning...