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My little boy (Sol) has come on leaps and bounds and is competent on his balance bike now. The only thing is it doesn’t have a brake so I’ve been looking at a few that do. My question is... is it worth while buying a slightly larger (frog tadpole plus etc) balance bike or bite the bullet and get him his first ‘proper’ bike?
Has he asked for a bike with pedals ? If he has then he's ready 👍
Both ours went straight from the balance bike (with a brake in the case of The Boy, but he never used it, so I took it off when I resprayed it for The Girl) to a Cnoc 14. Went fine in both cases, both around their third birthday, YMMV.
When they started to learn pedalling we'd either be on smooth grass where they could fall over painlessly or on flat tarmac where I'd be walking/jogging alongside to grab them if they were going over, so they didn't need to learn about brakes until pedalling was already fairly natural.
You can always take the pedals off whichever bigger bike you buy so they can practice balancing on it before they try to pedal it.
I moved mine up when they were pestering me for a "proper" bike. At this point they were super confident on the balance bike and pulling skids using the (rear) brake.
I think they did benefit from getting used to the brake before pedaling.
my lad went from the smallest brakeless Puky at 2 to the mid sized one with a back brake then onto a Cnoc 14 sometime around the age of 3 1/2. As above you can remove the pedals on the pedal bike and let them learn to scoot it, which often they'll do as a means to get moving before pedalling anyway.
I think there's an advantage to getting used to a brake as its not really an intuitive control like steering and use of the feet so they need to make the connection between using the lever and slowing down which requires some conscious thought before it becomes a reflex. Gears are the next step from that
Thanks for the feedback. I’m going to try and pick up a tadpole plus on Ebay etc. I have removed the pedals on another occasion when I taught my daughter 10 years ago prior to the balance bike ethos being well established as the way forward. I don’t want to rush his development and feel he would benefit from learning to brake before the pedals are introduced. Thanks again
Ps WANTED Balance bike with brake 🙂
My daughter went from no bike to pedaling without stabilisers in a morning session aged 4. She hated her balance bike so never ever rode it and hated stabilisers so never rode that either. I just did the broom handle behind the seatpost trick for a few runs and off she went.
I think the need to learn via a balance bike is vastly overrated.
What run bike do you have?
It might be possible to add a caliper style rim brake to the front...some even have rear provisions. No, OTB won't be an issue.
As far as being ready, if your kid can feet up coast down a hill making steering and balance corrections without using his feet, he's ready.
Issi really enjoyed having access to both for a while. Pedalling was fun but hard and sometimes he just wanted to go play bikes.
It’s a cube 120(?)
Little hole in the crown? You can get a caliper mounted in that..
I’m away from home but will check this out... good idea man👊🏻
Bought my four year old a pedal bike (carrera cosmos, it gets thrown about) and made a wooden frame that would leave the rear wheel off the ground an inch and support the bike. Feed him the odd biscuit if he would sit and watch pj masks whilst pedalling in the lounge and getting a feel for pedalling, brakes etc.
Sorted. Now just as good on his pedal bike as he was on his balance bike. Rode 5 miles the other day happily.
Awesome ingenuity man! 👊🏻