Teaching How to Ride a Bike with No Training Wheels

Oh boy! Been there! My son will be 10 in April and just learned to ride last September w/out training wheels. For a long time he would just refuse to get on the bike. He would cry and have a meltdown if I tried to force him. I would have him just get on the bike to see how much he has grown, and tell him he only had to sit on it. He was more comfortable when he could put his feet almost flat to the ground. I borrowed a friends' son's smaller bike and let him sit on that and push himself along with his feet. I was sweeping the driveway, pretending not to pay attention as he scooted along and then eventually put his feet on the pedals and went. I couldn't believe it and was so proud of him for overcoming that fear. It was like teaching him to swim. At the time they don't want to do it, but they will thank you for it later as they take off with their friends.
I would say be patient, Try a smaller bike or look into a balance bike. I had a friend that bought a cheap bike from Goodwill and removed the pedals and chain(made it into her own balance bike) and let her son get the hang of it that way. He was riding his own bike later that day! You can also try going to a soccer field with the short/cushy grass and see if he is willing to try riding there and will land on the grass if he falls.
Good luck!

Hold onto the seat and run alongside of him. Only way. Then at one point you let go. Go to a big area to teach him. All my kids gave up training wheels at 5. He can do it. Good luck.

Wait until he's ready. If he's not ready now, why push it?

When he is ready, take him to a parking lot that isn't used on the weekends. Both you and hubby go with him. Tell him that afterwards, you'll go out for ice cream. And get the ice cream even if he can't figure out how to ride the bike without the wheels.

Wear long pants on him, and a bike helmet.

Dawn

My daughter has hypotonia and just learned how to ride a 2-wheel bike last summer at the age of 12. Our issue was that she relied totally on the training wheels to keep her balance when she'd ride a bike. For the past couple years, she didn't ride a bike at all because she was too big for training wheels/would have bent the bike frame.

I actually had to reach out to bicycle groups for help, as many of them have some type of riding assistance/learning how to ride a bike help. There is a yearly summer camp for Autism/Down Syndrome children here in town where the kids are taught how to ride a bike. That was an idea, but my daughter adamantly refused to go. Then I thought I'd have to take my daughter all the way to Chicago for help, as there was a bicycle group there who helped train people to ride, but then I got lucky and was directed to a guy with the City of Madison Parks and Recreation Division whose sole job it is to teach kids about bike safety as well as to teach them how to ride a bike.

How much luckier could I get! And it was free! He refused to take any money from me because he was paid/that was his job, to teach kids how to ride a bike.

If you're interested in knowing how he approached helping my daughter, please PM me, as the information is quite long. I'll get back to you on what methods worked for us.

Tipping over and falling is going to happen - no one ever learned to ride a bike without taking a few spills.
If he isn't ready, he isn't ready. Don't push it. It isn't as though he HAS to be able to ride a bike to survive. He wil do it if and when he is ready, and if he never does, it's not the end of the world.

Tipping over is part of the learning curve, and he's bound to fall, several times.
You do need to take him somewhere large and flat, like a parking lot, so he has lots of room to get going and STAY going. But if he's afraid of falling or simply not interested I'm not sure what you can do, other than wait a few months and try again. It's ultimately up to him.

We took our kids to the school playground on a weekend. Other than watching for the basketball poles, it was wide open and no cars to worry about. The girls thought it was fun to break the school rules about riding on the playground.

I've always heard that the best way is to take them to a long (not too steep) hill, with the pedals having first been removed from the bike. Then the only thing they have to do is balance and steer. No confusion about what to do with the pedals.
Once they master the balance and steering (which going downhill speeds that along) they easily add the pedaling to it.
I haven't tried it this way (where we live is completely flat anyway)... but I will say that my son never seemed very comfortable on his bike until we took it with us to my parents house one time. They have a walk out basement, and the yard slopes from the end of the concrete driveway down a curved hill to a slightly sloped back yard. He rode his bike from the driveway down the hill/backyard all weekend and he was an expert rider when we got back home.
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ETA: Son was about 7 when we took the bike to Grandparent's with us. Until then, we lived in a neighborhood with a very short drive, no room to practice turning around on a street with no sidewalks. It was quite intimidating. When I learned to ride, I learned on a dirt road/grass. That is the surface that got my son more comfortable (dirt/grass) and the slope gave him the speed to focus solely on balance and steering.

Grass! Find a park somewhere!

You'll definitely need a bigger, flat area.
Is there a large lot anywhere near you?
Throw the bike in the car & go!

We took our sons bike and lowered the seat as low as it would go. So yes his knees almost hit the handle bars but as he tried to pedal, if he felt unsteady he could put his feet down and catch himself. Basically we made a version of a balance bike ourselves. I highly recommend going to a park or find a sidewalk. He won't be able to learn in a turnaround driveway. He needs a straight path until he gets comfortable. He also needs to be able to get some speed because if they go too slow they wobble. We never needed one but my neigbor used an upside down vice grip on the back of his daughters seat so he could run along side and hold on if needed.

Teach him to ride his bike in the grass and preferable with a small incline of some sort. In the grass, he'll have more control and a softer landing surface and will be less apprehensive. This is what we did with DD when she was 5 and I wish we would've taken the training wheels of sooner. Just push him and let him go and he'll figure it out. I was amazed at how quickly DD picked it up once we took her out of her comfort zone.

As a side note, I generally think kids do much better when parents stop hovering and they back off.

we went to a park that had the artificial turf so it didnt hurt as bad when they toppled over and its short enough that it didnt keep them from going. At 8 I think he will pick it up quickly but you do have to have room to go without turning around. My kids both learned this way when they were 5. Good luck

yes - you probably will need to take him to another spot to learn then. He needs a long enough straight shot to get a feel for the balance part. Turns are hard at first. He needs room to make big wide turns. School parking lot sounds perfect. pack a bag with snacks and water and a blanket to sit on for breaks and make an afternoon of it.

My daughter learned on the grass. She would NOT ride on the road without training wheels, but it was clear to us that she didn't need them. Riding on the grass made her feel safer, so she learned in our yard. Took her 10 minutes on the grass to feel safe, and then she was back on the road and taking off!

Amy C., my son has hypotonia too! And cannot yet ride w/o training wheels. He'll be 7 this summer, and his 4-year-old cousin is already training-wheel free, which makes my son not even want to talk about riding bikes. So -- it's an issue.

Anyway, I obviously don't have a solution, but I do have sort of a plan.

Put your son in all kinds of protective gear. Helmet (I'm sure you're doing that anyway), knee pads, elbow pads, biking gloves (to protect against scraped hands). Put him in long pants and long sleeves, but old and scruffy, so they can get torn no problem. And then say, "Hooray, you're ready for a two-wheeler. It's okay if you fall a hundred times. That's just how people learn to balance." And, let him fall. He might just need to be able to fall -- and know that falling isn't a huge deal -- to learn how NOT to fall.

It also does help for him to have the space to get up some speed or go down a very, very gentle hill. It's hard for anyone to bike on a small driveway. Are there any public parks with bike paths in your area?

We took a long bed sheet and twisted it into a "long rope" that we wrapped around my daughter. It gave us away to hold on and assist with balancing without actually holding onto her or the bike. As she became more steady we loosened the sheet more and more until we eventually let it go. You can YouTube this technique because it is hard for me to describe. It worked for us!

You need a slight downhill slope. Let him get gliding so he has some speed and he should be much less 'tippy'.

You could try taking the pedals (and training wheels) off and let him learn balance first by pushing and steering. This would make it similar to the various push bikes that are made for younger kids. However, if it's only in your driveway, it may not help much.

You could also look into a gyro bike to see if it's something that might work. I have not tried it but it looks interesting. They are pricey though so you could check into if there is a way to rent one. Or maybe find a friend that might also need one soon and share the expense.

http://www.thegyrobike.com/

Take the pedals off, lower the seat a bit and have him push the bike around with his feet. It will give him a good feel for how he needs to balance without the training wheels but the confidence to know he won't tip over or be going so fast he is liable to fall. This is how we taught both our daughters to ride and it was awesome. I only had to run behind them holding the seat for about 50 feet before they took off and never looked back.