First bike for preschooler

[Marina]

Ds says he would like a bike for his 4th birthday later this month.
I'd be really grateful for recommendations from anyone. He is not a physically confident child so stabilisers will be essential and we want to avoid going the "character bike" route because knowing our luck he will go right off the character in question before he gets the wrapping paper off.
Any suggestions welcome!

small ads! Loads of people have little bikes for only a year.

This is probably too vague to be useful but Toysrus (gulp) usually have quite a lot of bikes that would appeal to boys without having characters on them, but with stabilisers.

You've probably thought of this but do you know any slightly older kids in your area that may not want their's anymore? Or, how about putting a note up at the nursery's nearby asking if anyone has one they are wanting to get rid of. You can obviously go the normal route of local papers, the Loot (they're online too) or ebay etc but this might help. You may not want to go direct to the nursery your son is going to in case the kid he gets it off makes comments once he starts there but even so I'm sure you could phrase it correctly so that he feels important if the child does.

Even if the bike doesn't have stabilisers when you get it most bike shops would stock these or maybe even Argos or a place like that. I haven't checked Argos mind you to see if they do them separately.

i agree Mm - loads are virtually untouched

Bought separate stabilisers from Big W for about £5 and I expect somewhere like Halfords would do them too.

Buying a first bike is like getting shoes fitted, IMO, marina. You have to have the child and product in one place, plus expert.

So go to a bike shop - a big one. Find a helpful assistant, one you feel you can trust, and get him to show you and your son a selection of bikes. Make sure your son has a chance to ride them. Between the three of you, find the best fit. Also fit the helmet.

No good opting for a surprise bike present. IMO your son must be in on the buying process, so if you decide to buy a used one, take him with you.

The bell, water bottle and gloves can all be extra surpises - bike buying is not cheap.

HTH

Marina, we got a bike for ds at Christmas for ds who was just 4 at the time. We went to the place below (they have a website too I believe) They sell discounted new bikes, and their service was brilliant. We took ds and tried out a few, they measured him for stabilisers, helmets etc. I think his bike was about £55, a big chunky bmx style with pumpable (is that a real word?) tyres. Some first bikes have tyres you can't pump. I would higly recommend paying them a visit if you are anywhere near.

Bikes Direct Warehouse
14 Havenbury Industrial Estate
Station Road (West Station)
Dorking, Surrey
RH4 1ES Telephone 01306 876060

They are closed Tues through to Thurs , but open the rest of the week.

Having just bought a bike for DS when he started getting onto the bikes belonging to the girls next door and riding them away(!) we found that they broke down into two basic types - the ones which allow you to freewheel, and the ones where the pedals go round if the real wheel does. I think the second type are probably easier if your DS hasn't learnt to pedal yet, as they encourage the association between the movement and the pedals going round. As your DS is quite a bit older (and therefore presumably bigger) than mine you might find that type harder to find though - I didn't notice any which were larger than 12" (that's the wheel size by the way - kids bikes seem to be sized by the size of the whels, while adult ones are the size of the frame) and you'd probably want 14" for a 4 year old.

We bought DS's bike from Toys'r'us, but I've since come across this site which seems to have some reasonably priced ones - dfficult to say for certain without seeing them of course.