Learning to ride a bike

by Alan Cole · Published Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 · Updated Monday, January 24th, 2011

We bought Morgan his first ever proper bike on Monday. Nothing special, just a bike from Halfords that is slightly too big, but the next size down was too small and he would have grown out of it petty quickly, so we though one that he could grow into would be better.

I don’t know who was more excited about getting him on it, me or him but once home we had a quick go in the garden. He hasn’t been on a proper bike before so I was expecting some crashes and a difficult time getting him going properly and the fact that he can’t actually put his feet on the floor wasn’t going to help.

He has however had a small balance bike for a while. These are bikes without any pedals that you scoot along on.he got the hang of this really quickly and can therefore balance on a bike, but I thought a proper bike was going to be much more difficult. he hasn’t ever had one with stabilisers on.

So the scene was set, Morgan had his helmet on and was ready to go, I showed him which way to pedal, held the back of his saddle and off he went. Somehow he managed it straight away and headed of down the garden. At this point, as he was fast apporaching the pergola I realised that I hadn’t explained to him about stopping. I hadn’t expected him to get that far and instead of following him down the garden I was just standing there in disbelief. He almost made it through the pergola and into the botom part of the garden, but panicked and crashed into the pergola itself. Well, that was one way to stop.

I then reminded him about the brakes and the next step was cycling acros to the beach. he has the hang of it already. he’s had a few small crashes of course, but can ride a bike… Wooohooo.

I think the balance bike was definitely a help and the fact that he has never been on a bike with stabilisers was a good thing. The stabilisers just allow them to get away with doing it wrong and help them to develop bad habits. The balance bike encourages good balance and the feeling of riding a proper bike. Getting the timing right was important too. Too young and he wouldn’t be ready for it and would just have got frustrated and probably not wanted to do it. Too old and he would think about it too much. I think we got it just right. Morgan wanted to do it, wasn’t intimidated by it, expected it to be difficult but was willing to give it a go and was as pleased as could be when he managed to do it. You should have seen his face after cycling the length of the path from the beach. he got of his bike and jumped up and down shouting “I did it, i did it!”.

Oh, and as you see from the photos it wasn’t long before I was sending him offroad down steeper slopes!