How to help my ds learn his balance bike??

[shirleycat1]

We got him a Stompee balance bike for his 2nd birthday. He kind of liked walking with it between his legs but never really progressed and soon lost interest, so we bought him a scooter a couple of months later which he picked up in a week or two.

He's just turned 3 now and has still not got the hang of his balance bike. He will play on it for 10 minutes or so but still just walks with it l and I don't know what I can do to encourage him. Would we be better on a slight hill? Should I push him along on it?

My dp thinks the problem is with the seat and he slides down it, but I'm not convinced and I've seen videos of kids on his type of balance bike doing it fine. It's not overly heavy either.

Obviously if he's not bothered about it I'm not going to push him and it's fine if he doesn't want to do it, but he does ask to get the bike out. He just gets frustrated that he can't really get anywhere in a hurry.

Any ideas?

We had v similar with our dds, yes a slight slope made all the difference. dd1 mastered the balance bike and progressed to a proper peddle bike in about a week once we found a suitable hill. She was very keen though.

slight slope is good. or find a long puddle and let him glide through with his feet up in the air (take spare clothes...)

Make sure he's sitting/resting on it.

Try to find another child that has one that you can go to the park with so that he can copy (this happened as 'one of those things' with us when DS was just over 2 and he really studied what the older child was doing and made huge progress that day)

Thanks for your replies.

I'm going to persist with it and a slight slope sounds like it'll help. DP is also investigating a new seat - we'll see if that helps...

The ability to balance comes with speed - so, after you've got him sitting on it, walking his legs along, the next step is to get him to stretch out more and go faster - a slight downhill slope does help. Agreed, feet up going through puddles also a good way of going - particularly if he's used to running before jumping a puddle. Even if its only a small puddle to start with its a good opportunity.

When he does get it you'll suddenly find that walks are much quicker - we went round hugely faster than any family with a child on a bike with stabilisers - even if the child was several years older than DS.

I thoroughly recommend getting used to having a helmet on (I was very glad when DS fell off at speed with his head landing about 1" from a very solid, right-angled fence post) and cycle gloves - because if he falls off these will stop him scraping his palms.

DS has never had stabilisers on his big bike - and it took just a weekend of learning to start it going to be fairly competent on a normal bike when he was 4.