Comment by Al-Khwarizmi

Yeah, both my wife and myself learned with training wheels (I don't think balance bikes were a think) and it was a rather long process involving being scared, not wanting to remove the training wheels, and having an adult hold us and basically deceive us by releasing when we weren't suspecting.

My son had a balance bike when he was around 2 or 3. It then became too small for him. We bought him a normal bike when he was 5. We thought that maybe he would still need training wheels because it had been a few years since he last used the balance bike, but said "let's try without them just in case". He learned to ride in literally less than an hour, without any fears or surprises, and has never fallen so far unless when he gets cocky and thinks he can ride behind very slow pedestrians at like 1 km/h.