Biking is Life
For our three-year-old, since about 18 months, nothing has been more important than his bike. Living in Europe, I’d see little kids learning to ride on bikes I’d never seen growing up, which I’d later learn were called balance bikes.
The idea was that the child would learn how to stabilize themselves first and foremost. Once they were comfortable on the balance bike, adding pedals to the equation isn’t as big a deal. I figured, who am I to argue with the Dutch when it comes to bikes? I decided then, if I ever had a little one, they would learn on a balance bike. Well fast-forward a few years, and the first sentence my son ever put together was, “Mom, Dad….I need a bike!”. Needless to say we said okay!
After extensive research, and building comparison tables (probably my favorite thing to do), we decided to go with the Woom brand of bike. Ultimately, I’m very happy with that choice, but the major difference which I felt set Woom apart (the handbrake) ended up never being used at all. Still, it was a very high quality bike and our son had some incredible experiences on it.
Granted, a desire for a bicycle literally drove him to finally stringing words together, but the kid took to it like a duck to water. In less than 3 days he looked like he’d been biking his whole life. It was incredible seeing the pure joy he experienced riding his bike.
Recently, he started asking for a pedal-bike. His mother and I looked around to gather info on what size, pro’s and cons of various brands. Some resources that helped us were two-wheeling-tots and reading reviews along with “best first pedal bike” rankings across multiple sites, seeing which brands repeated.
Taking everything into account, we decided to stick with Woom. The quality of their bike was so great, and we were so happy with our Woom 1, that it was time to upgrade to the Woom 2.
I couldn’t be happier with our choice, and the same for our son. It was pretty rough at first actually. I thought we’d stick near the house and on a flat spot practice using the pedals, but completely unsure as to what type of difficulty curve we’d be experiencing. From what I’d read, I was almost expecting him to instantly just do it all and not even react to pedals existing.
I was wrong about that….
It was a struggle! Immediately it felt like all his time riding was gone, and he couldn’t even ride remotely straight! The handlebars were wobbling all over, his feet didn’t know where to go, he was obviously a bit upset because his dream was this pedal bike, and now it’s all falling apart.
He decided he wanted to go to the playground, to show his friends he had a pedal-bike. After making sure he was re-acquainted with his hand brake, I said okay. We got all the way to that playground, with my bent over holding him around the waist, and mostly helping push him forward, while his feet moved with the pedals. In the 20 minutes it took us to make that 5 minute walk, I would periodically, get him started so he’s pedaling once it was straight and level ground, and keep a hand on his back, ready to catch him if needed. He would do okay, until noticing I wasn’t holding him and yell, “Dad!!! Don’t me go!”. When we arrived at the playground I was DRENCHED in sweat, my back already was throbbing, but he was having fun instead of being frustrated.
Thankfully, he was open to the idea of immediately turning around to head home. We got back 45 minutes after we left (it’s not easy to push/hold up a 3-year-old on a bike that’s constantly stopping himself!). Then as we got back to the house, something unbelievable to my sweat-drenched, hurting, and slightly disappointed self happened. He told me, “Dad, don’t help”.
I was actually sure he thought I’d let go and was trying to ask me to help him. Especially since he’ll mix up do and don’t often. I asked him, “Don’t help you?”, expecting him to say, “No, help me”. Instead he repeated himself, “Don’t help me!”. Okay, I thought, let’s see how this goes. I let go, just keeping a hand on his back to help him up the slight incline, and then it happened…
Off he went, he started pedaling, he was doing it! 45 minutes after looking like a hot mess, this kid was doing it all. Pedaling, steering, braking. The cherry on top was Mom had wondered what we were up to for so long, and had just come out to check on us as we arrived, so we both got to see him take off on his own together. Needless to say, he was beyond excited. We spend the next 3 hours riding laps around our house, as he masted everything pedaling.
It took about three more days to really nail being able to start his bike from a stop. But that was the last piece of the puzzle. Now we get out on our bikes together and it’s such a great time.
If I was starting all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing. Our son’s Woom balance bike was incredible, and it made the transition to his first pedal bike take less than one hour. When his first bike arrived, the box had printed on the outside, “Happy Childhood Inside”. I couldn’t have put it better myself.