Comment by pastage
3 days ago
A balance bike is a way of transportation for kids, they can use balance bikes for a long time before they are comfortable with biking with pedals. We are talking years with a balance bike and then there is an overlap where they prefer the balance bike.
It is also alot more light weight than a normal bike so it is actually better for you and the kid. I transported a kid and a balance bike easily on a normal bike for more than 20 km, they managed about 10 km on their own.
> We are talking years with a balance bike and then there is an overlap where they prefer the balance bike.
Let me clarify - I'm not saying you can't continue using it for years after.
I'm saying there is no point to continuing using it once the kids has developed their balance. That development typically takes only a few dozen minutes, at most.
As an analogy, consider reading. Your kid can, after learning to read, continue reading the level-1 (Fun With Dick And Jane type) books for years, but why would you encourage that?
> I'm saying there is no point to continuing using it once the kids has developed their balance. That development typically takes only a few dozen minutes, at most.
Well yes there is a point. At the age of 2 or 3 bikes are so small and their cranks so short that the gearing is very low. Which means kids are usually faster on a balance bike at that age so it is much more rewarding.
At age of 4 or 5 kids can realise they might be faster and get tired less by riding a real bike so they have a motivation for it.
My son kept using it because it was fun. You don't have to optimize everything.
By the way, buying things that are useful for a short amount of time is not such a waste if you embrace the second hand market. Which at least in my country, is very lively for kids' stuff.
My son used his so much that I had to replace the tires. The guy at the bike shop said they had never ordered that size.
Second hand? What a waste! The neighborhood co-working space has a free pile of kids stuff divided by age range. It works pretty much like a library: people take some and leave some. Every once in a while some stuff gets thrown out because it's broken or too used up and donations come in regularly. They got to a point where they had to refuse some donations because they had no room.
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A kid that can use a balance bike is a lot faster on that than on a normal bike for a long time, they have a lot more fun as well. So it is practical as a transportation, which is what bicycles are for me.
IME balance bikes is the greatest thing for bicycles since the safety bicycle. My family are cyclists, my kids easily cycled 20km per day before turning six. I got a balance bike for my second child because I needed to get around faster and I do not like having to transport my children. At 3 years old we could do 3 km with the balance bike in a pinch.
There is a reason electic bikes are cheap and easy to use, when you remove pedals and chain the construction get so much easier the same is true for an balance bike.
> IME balance bikes is the greatest thing for bicycles since the safety bicycle.
Since before the safety bicycle: Balance bikes came first. Then the pedals were added -- driving the front wheel, like kids' bikes still did when I was a kid -- then the front wheel grew into the "penny-farthing", then came the safety bicycle. But the balance bike -- for adults! -- came first. Invented by a baron (Carl?) von Drais; that's why they're called "draisins" in some languages. (Which is also the name for muscle-powered rail vehicles in some languages; presumably via pedal-powered bicycles --> pedal-powered rail carts.)
The point you're missing is that your kid could have played on a balance bike years before it was old enough to be introduced to the real bike.
Also, there might be plenty of cheap used balance bikes out there. We bought ours for 10-20 bucks, our 2.5 year old used it until she got promoted to real bike with 3.5 or so and had zero issues.
Compare that to me as a kid, where would I had the training wheels nonsense, and it took me waaaay longer to learn how to ride a bike.
I'm slightly surprised this is such a revelation in this thread, around these parts (Berlin, Germany), balance bikes are extremely common and training wheels are seen as a maladaptive thing from yesteryear.