> Given the benefits of balance bikes, why did it take so long for them to replace training wheels?
Answer: because buying a dedicated bike just to train how to use a bike is not something you can do unless you're affluent. Adding or removing training wheels is cheap and means you can keep using the same bike.
find a reasonable long grass hill - not to too steep, but steep enough to allow a kid to go down the hill riding the bike with out pedalling.
and then goto the top of the hill and let them go down the hill on the bike. Once they master the balancing part of going down, they seem to pick up the art of turning the pedals at the end of the hill to keep going (if not, explain what to do)
advantages: doesn't hurt when they fall off, gets them used to rough terrain. it becomes fun once they start to master the balancing bit
We had been trying for weeks without result, both with trainer wheels and to run behind with an attached handle. Then one day we unmounted the pedals and lowered the seat... after just an afternoon we could reattach the pedals and he was now cycling on his own!
I'm really not understanding why you think it's necessary to remove more than that.
I've done it on quite a number of different bikes, it really is quite easy.
I have no idea how these victorian steam punk contraptions are assembled and sold at a <$100 price point
I'd really like to see training wheels with adjustable spring tension. Gradually make the spring weaker so the training wheels have less effect every couple weeks, until they aren't really doing anything at all.
Also I'm talking about the training wheels being lifted an inch or two. Causes a lean of maybe 10 - 15 degrees I'd guess.
That is where I was hoping to find spring loaded training wheels so that it forces the kid to constantly try to balance. Start off with really stiff springs and then weaken them over time.
It only took a couple hours with each kid... pushing them up to speed and then letting go. They’d fall, there would be tears, and we’d try it again. And, then, after several scraped knees and bruised shins, that magical moment would occur when some little cluster of neurons finally makes the new connections, and voila... they’d be bike riders. All the tears and frustration would be replaced by euphoria.
Clearly a two or three year old, perhaps, is better off with a scooter or balance bike. But, as an old fart, watching 7 and 8 year olds in the park riding ‘balance bikes’, I get the sneaking suspicion that the parents are stretching out a couple-hour process to a couple-month or year process merely because they can’t permit themselves to let the kid wipe out.
Don’t even get me started with swimming...
Taking the pedals off seemed functional equivalent to a balance bike, and I taught my 4 and 5 year old to ride their bikes the same afternoon.
Same with swimming.
It's kinda goody to judge other parents, tho. A lot of stuff that is easy for me is hard for other folks. But I've been divorced twice, and a lot of folks haven't. So very difficult to judge.
I don't, in general, think that your description of why folks aren't teaching the kiddos using your method is accurate. IME, most folks are just ignorant that it can be done at all.
But, getting back to the article, I’m somewhat dubious about the assumption that humanity just stumbled upon the idea of a balance-bike due to some mental fog that prevented us from considering it.
I think it might be more likely that parenting-styles have changed a bit and there is now a market for a bike-teaching tool that is safer. In other words, I suspect that if you presented a dad in the 1950s with a balance bike and explained it was a tool to more gradually and safely get a child pedaling, he might scratch his head and say, “why would I use that? When the kid is old enough to ride a bike, I’ll be able to show him how in a single afternoon.”
Training wheels make a bike rideable very quickly.
What got them riding without training wheels was learning to ride Razor scooters. One afternoon when I saw them both riding sweeping S curves on their scooters, I took their training wheels off. At 6 and 7 1/2 yrs, they when from total terror on their bikes to riding comfortably in a few hours. It only took a few rides with me running alongside holding on (continually holding on less each time).
It was amazing.
(We merged https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26740085 hither.)