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Comment by lelanthran | Hacker News Reader

> We've now taught both of our kids to bike by starting with a balance bike,

I looked at the balance bike, thought "what a waste of money" and told my kid "just scoot up and down this level pathway while I fix the pool pump. don't worry about pedaling." and 5 minutes into the pump repair he was balancing just fine.

I'm not buying a toy that gets used for 5 minutes only. Whether I can afford it or not is irrelevant.

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Usually people get balance bikes for kids that are too small for a normal bike, so they use it for some time before they get tall enough to change (around a year or 2).

A balance bike is a way of transportation for kids, they can use balance bikes for a long time before they are comfortable with biking with pedals. We are talking years with a balance bike and then there is an overlap where they prefer the balance bike.

It is also alot more light weight than a normal bike so it is actually better for you and the kid. I transported a kid and a balance bike easily on a normal bike for more than 20 km, they managed about 10 km on their own.

> We are talking years with a balance bike and then there is an overlap where they prefer the balance bike.

Let me clarify - I'm not saying you can't continue using it for years after.

I'm saying there is no point to continuing using it once the kids has developed their balance. That development typically takes only a few dozen minutes, at most.

As an analogy, consider reading. Your kid can, after learning to read, continue reading the level-1 (Fun With Dick And Jane type) books for years, but why would you encourage that?

The point you're missing is that your kid could have played on a balance bike years before it was old enough to be introduced to the real bike.

Also, there might be plenty of cheap used balance bikes out there. We bought ours for 10-20 bucks, our 2.5 year old used it until she got promoted to real bike with 3.5 or so and had zero issues.

Compare that to me as a kid, where would I had the training wheels nonsense, and it took me waaaay longer to learn how to ride a bike.

I'm slightly surprised this is such a revelation in this thread, around these parts (Berlin, Germany), balance bikes are extremely common and training wheels are seen as a maladaptive thing from yesteryear.

My son kept using it because it was fun. You don't have to optimize everything.

By the way, buying things that are useful for a short amount of time is not such a waste if you embrace the second hand market. Which at least in my country, is very lively for kids' stuff.

Second hand? What a waste! The neighborhood co-working space has a free pile of kids stuff divided by age range. It works pretty much like a library: people take some and leave some. Every once in a while some stuff gets thrown out because it's broken or too used up and donations come in regularly. They got to a point where they had to refuse some donations because they had no room.

> It works pretty much like a library: people take some and leave some

Sounds like second hand.

My son used his so much that I had to replace the tires. The guy at the bike shop said they had never ordered that size.

A kid that can use a balance bike is a lot faster on that than on a normal bike for a long time, they have a lot more fun as well. So it is practical as a transportation, which is what bicycles are for me.

IME balance bikes is the greatest thing for bicycles since the safety bicycle. My family are cyclists, my kids easily cycled 20km per day before turning six. I got a balance bike for my second child because I needed to get around faster and I do not like having to transport my children. At 3 years old we could do 3 km with the balance bike in a pinch.

There is a reason electic bikes are cheap and easy to use, when you remove pedals and chain the construction get so much easier the same is true for an balance bike.

> IME balance bikes is the greatest thing for bicycles since the safety bicycle.

Since before the safety bicycle: Balance bikes came first. Then the pedals were added -- driving the front wheel, like kids' bikes still did when I was a kid -- then the front wheel grew into the "penny-farthing", then came the safety bicycle. But the balance bike -- for adults! -- came first. Invented by a baron (Carl?) von Drais; that's why they're called "draisins" in some languages. (Which is also the name for muscle-powered rail vehicles in some languages; presumably via pedal-powered bicycles --> pedal-powered rail carts.)

> I'm saying there is no point to continuing using it once the kids has developed their balance. That development typically takes only a few dozen minutes, at most.

Well yes there is a point. At the age of 2 or 3 bikes are so small and their cranks so short that the gearing is very low. Which means kids are usually faster on a balance bike at that age so it is much more rewarding.

At age of 4 or 5 kids can realise they might be faster and get tired less by riding a real bike so they have a motivation for it.

We got about two years per kid out of it (age 2-4). 4 years of amortized bike for something like $100 seemed pretty good, and it was in good enough shape after that we gave it to a neighbor. It's definitely not a 5 minute thing if used as the primary bike for a child too young for a pedal bike.

This. And I don't think I've ever see a 2-3 year old pedal a bike well. But holy-moly can they rock out on a balance bike.

> I'm not buying a toy that gets used for 5 minutes only

Round here loads of kindergarten-age kids use their balance bike for transportation every single day. I saw one zooming along behind her/his parent (who was pushing another kid along in a buggy) first thing this morning.

> toy

A toy? The balance bike was our kid's secondary mode of transportation for 2.5 years, after our bike trailer.

How old was your kid? I mean apart from learning to balance itself there is a matter of how strong the thigh muscles are in order to pedal. If your kid was like 5 then it makes sense that it would not be that interesting. If your kid is like 3 or sth, then a balance bike can be a great means of transportation for them. They can use it really a lot and enjoy it, until they can actually pedal on a normal bike in a way that it can be practical. The point of the balance bike is not "to learn balance", but to actually be used for moving around.

Balance bikes are super cheap, very light, and the kid uses it for like a year or more until you are ready to buy the proper bike

We got our kid her balance bike when she was around 1.5, so she used it for almost 2 years. They are not even expensive.

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