How do you teach older kids to ride bikes?

[EarlofShrewsbury]

I'm ashamed to admit it but my kids can't ride bikes.

They are 8 and 10. The youngest has additional needs and it hasn't really been safe to let her learn up until now due to a lack of danger awareness and impulse control. The eldest has never learnt as a consequence of this. Life just got in the way. I feel like I've let her down.

They did get bikes when they were preschoolers but they haven't been used and are now way too small. I've bought them new bikes for Christmas but they are too big for ones with stabilisers.

How do I get them to learn? I've booked a holiday where a massive draw is the cycle hire and bike trails and I'd love to be able to do that. I'm aware I probably won't get hire bikes big enough that have stabilisers so I'm determined to teach them. We go in June, is it even possible to teach before then?

Please help.

The more unsure they are, the stronger argument against stabilisers in my view. Feet able to reach the floor on a balance bike feels much less scary and will build security. We tried with my daughter (ASD) for ages via the stabiliser method and really freaked her out. As soon as that stabilisers came off, everything felt very different and scary. She ended in a tumble numerous times. Gave up for a few months, came back to it with balance bike method. She never got really whizzy on the balance bike like her little brother did, but we could see she was teetering quite long distances on it quickly, and every try now ended with her putting her feet on the floor rather than tumbling off sideways where a stabiliser would have stopped her previously. Ever so much easier and gentler on her.

Book someone to teach them in a weekend. Two sessions should be enough.

Lots of great advice above, Two other thoughts which may be useful:

• Rather than taking pedals etc off your kids existing bikes, I'd look at getting freebie/very cheap bikes for them, and take pedals and/or cranks off those. From the recycling centre, from freecycle, that sort of thing. Slight risk that the pedals might be rusted on. However, this will mean that your kids can swap between their homemade balance bikes and their nice pedal bikes, which increases confidence. So they can scoot round the block on the balance bike, have a little go on the pedal bike, back to the balance bike for a bit. If you do take pedals off their existing bikes, make sure you put grease on the threaded pedal spindle when you put the pedals back on. Do buy a pedal spanner for this job (or a really long spanner from a good DIY shop) otherwise you may be in for a world of pain.
• Last time me and my family went to Duinrell (prob about 2016) I don't remember there being a whole lot of cycling going on! We were just there for the day though as part of our cycle tour, so we parked our bikes up outside and walked around the theme park rides and swimming pool bit. Maybe it's different in the accommodation bit. However, sometimes in life it's good to have a deadline and this sounds like a good one!

On a completely separate note, if you are on the Newcastle-Ijmuiden ferry, then this place is about halfway and was totally amazing: https://www.linnaeushof.nl/en/ Also near Duinrell is the European Space Agency Space Expo at Katwijk, which is well worth a trip. https://www.space-expo.nl/en When we last went, you could go on a tour around the site but kids had to be older than 10 and you had to prove age with a passport.
I hope you have a super time!