Getting DS6 to ride his bike

[Minimochi]

Hi,
DS is six and he's driving me nuts with his refusal to ride his own bike. He learnt how to ride a bike when he was 3.5, we got him a bigger one last year (20 inch but small frame) and he's been riding this one last year as well. This summer, he just seems to have completely regressed. He insists that he doesn't know how to ride a bike. We've gone back to his little 16 inch one and he's been scooting down our road in front of the house. He's fine balancing when he goes downhill. He will not put his feet on the pedals, though. He just screams. We've tried an 18 inch with stabilisers as a short term solution to get him used to the pedals again but he's screaming on that one, too. He actually bursts into tears and just goes, "I'm scared!!"

I took him out with the Follow Me attached to my bike yesterday just to give him the chance to try the pedalling and that worked a bit better. He initially screamed on that as well because it's "wobbly" but eventually got used tp it. He's way too heavy to be on there for longer trips, though, and it makes it hard for me to stabilise my bike when he's moving on the back. We do have a foldable bike seat on DHs bike which is meant to be up to age 11 but DS is quite tall and it's the same problem with him moving and the bike being much harder to control.

I'm not sure what else to do to get him to ride his bike. We'd like to go out cycling around a bit (ice cream shop or playground, nothing major) but it's impossible with him.

This is the same child, who used to go up and down ramps in the skate park on his bike when he was just 4...🤦‍♀️

It's not a compulsory activity, so I think I'd probably leave it and see if he wants to in the future, eg when his friends are.
One thing I did to encourage mine to practice (which may be a bit extreme!) was go jogging and ask her to keep me company. I started c25k and told her that because I'd be going so slowly she could ride off a bit and come back to me - that worked really well (her riding practice rather than me jogging) and increased her confidence massively.

Thanks. It is more or less compulsory. It's a basic skill that I expect my child to develop. We live in an area full of cycle paths and it's normal here for children to ride their bikes to get to their activities. Added to that is the fact that we currently cannot ride our own bikes anywhere because he's too young to be left at home and too scared to come along. So we are stuck as well. (I also want him to be a bit more active and this would have been perfect. He lives to come out on the bike with us but only when he's on the back of someone else's bike.)
He'll also need to ride his bike to pass his cycling proficiency test at school, even if that's still a bit in the future.

It's unlikely that he'll be going off to ride his bike with his friends around here since his school is a 30 minute car ride away. His friends live up to an hour from us. He'd need to take the train to meet up with them once he's a bit older.

A friend of mine does the jogging thing as well, and her kids ride their bikes. Now, I just need to find someone who can go jogging alongside him...

Well the more you force it the worse it will likely be . Riding a bike is not compulsory , take him out on a scooter or something until he decides he wants to ride again .

We've tried that. He loves his scooter. He's just much slower on that than we are on the bikes. It ended in him then saying he was tired, so he sat on the back of DH's bike and I had the scooter on my back.

It's just so bloody frustrating because he does know how to ride a bike.

it will come back to him when he finds it useful. You don't want to make this into a chronic conflict issue, he'll get an emotional reward for every time he clashes with you about it.

stop making this into a flash point.
He won't need to start riding to secondary school next week.

I can relate to your frustration but the pps are correct. This isn't a battle you can 'win'. Try modelling how fun bike riding is or see if you can spend time with other kids who are keen riders. He will get there in his own time and the more you pressure the more he might resist.

@lljkk It would be good for him to ride it to his current school. We've got a parent drop off a few hundred metres away from the school and most children walk independently from there from Y3 age onwards. I was planning on dropping him off there once he is old enough, so at some point next year.
Secondary school will involve a train ride...and possibly his bike. But that depends on which secondary school he'll go to.

I've tried not to make it an issue and have generally been quite laid back. He was already not keen last year and we thought he'd just grow out of it. He was still light enough for the seat on DHs bike then but he's just shot up in the last year so it's not really an option anymore. We're staying home during the summer holidays and this really limits what we can do on the days when it's not raining.

Have you tried bribing him with some sort of reward for re-learning?

Can your or his Dad take him somewhere quiet and teach him again from scratch as it were, on the bigger bike?
Doing the holding the saddle like you do and not letting go until you tell him you will.

Tell him he only needs to do the test rides 10 times (or whatever).
He might just need a refresher to get it back.
And the same patience and understanding from the first time around.

He's only 6 remember!

If he's regressed then the parenting needs to regress a little as well in order to reassure the child.

A bit of an extreme reaction on your part. Riding a bike is NOT compulsory, doesn't matter how much you like it. Why don't you drive to the park or wherever you want to go on the days it's not raining? He can do another sport like football ⚽️ or athletics or whatever he actually enjoys

You need to find out whats scaring him. Did he fall off, or knock his shins on the peddles, or went too fast one time...

@XelaM Where is the extreme reaction, please? Because I want to get out and about with my 6-year-old and not put him in a car the whole time?
So I get into my car and drive him to a park in the next town to do what? Kick a ball about? We can do that in the garden. We live right by the forest and have fields all around the house. We can also walk to the playground down the road, if needed. It's mind-numbingly boring, mind. There are no other kids about to play with here.
He'll start football at school after the holidays but we tried the local football club and he wouldn't even get out of the carpark. (He had asked to go in the first place.)
He'll go back to baseball training once his friend is back from Canada because he insists he cannot possibly go by himself. (I'm not sure whether he'll keep going throughout the winter because his friend will be switching to ice hockey, which DS doesn't like at all.) He also goes to swimming once a week, which I drive him to because the pool is on our way back from school.
He has no interest in athletics or anything like that and frequently just cries and gives up when he cannot do something straight away. He doesn't care about what his friends can do or cannot do, so just putting him with others, who can do certain sports isn't doing anything.

Riding a bike is a life skill. It is compulsory here because not only makes it much easier to get around but cycling proficiency is also being assessed and graded at school. And no, they do not teach them how to ride the bike. They teach them how to ride their bikes safely on the road, which they have to do a written test on and then several sessions actually riding their bikes on public roads. The local police department are in charge of that and put them through their paces. We are not in the UK.

if he's 6yo now then he's not in yr3 for at least 11 months. So much can change by then...

We've kept practising nearly every day and have been on a few shorter rides these past few days. DS is getting better but still prefers his Woom 3. It's too small for him and means he needs to pedal like crazy. We'll get him to move to his Cube (20 inch) eventually. It's just much heavier.
Today, we managed approximately 15 miles, which isn't that bad in 30 degree heat.

Could you sell the Cube for something lighter? I’ve just gone down this rabbit hole myself as 6YO DD needed a new 20 inch bike and I think the Cube is over a kilo heavier than the same size frog bike, and about 2kg heavier than the comparable isla bike. I wonder if it’s a poor choice of heavy bike putting him off, especially if he’s ok on his too small old bike.

I'm with you OP, although I appear to be the only one 😬 cycling is a life skill and the world wouldn't be so traffic crippled and polluted if people used active travel rather than cars.

My middle child sounds a bit like yours. We kept stopping and going back to it and he's now confident aged 8. It's been painful but now the whole family can cycle and we've been able to reduce the number of sub mile car journeys hugely.

It sounds to me like your approach is right. You've dropped back down when you needed and haven't let him stay scared. I do feel your frustration though. I used to point out how much fun every kid I saw cycling was having. We stuck at it. I think some kids are naturally more cautious and unable to let go enough to get into it easily. Same kid of mine was scared of swimming. Another thing we persisted with as I felt that was another life skill.

@TropicalTrama It's something I could look into. It's hard to get Frog Bikes or Isla Bikes here. I could look for a Woom 4 but they are hard to get, too and expensive even when they are second hand. Might be worth checking our, though.
What I can get here are Puky bikes. They usually have that pedal break, though, which DS doesn't like at all.

@weekfour Yeah, he's enjoying swimming by now but it's also something I've had to be pushy with. He hates lessons and just wants to go diving around at the moment. His teacher says he's got great potential but is just lacking focus. I just want him to be able to swim properly, to be honest. Again, life skill. It's also something he'll be doing at school but not until he's 8.

Sounds tricky. I’d probably just bribe him to do short journeys on it until he gets use to it but maybe that’s just me!