How to teach a kid to ride a bike can be a daunting task for some parents. And equally scary for the children too, who are learning to ride a bike. Their fear of falling and hurting themselves holds them back from letting go of their training wheels.

If you are having a difficult time teaching your child how to ride a bike, these psychological techniques will remove the mental blocks that are holding them back. As a parent (and coach), your job is to let them fly free and enjoy the thrill of riding a bike with their friends as soon as they safely can. Use these easy steps to teach your kid to ride a bike in no time.

Table of Contents

How To Teach A Kid To Ride A Bike: The Simple And Best Tricks
1. Reassure Your Child That You Will Not Let Them Fall Off The Bike
2. Don’t Lecture Them On How To Ride A Bike
3. Allow Their Automatic Reflexes To Balance The Bicycle
Why This Works And Quickly Teaches Your Kid How To Ride A Bike
Best Way For Teaching Your Child To Ride A Bike
Best Kids Bike For Learning How To Ride
1. Schwinn Krate Evo Classic Kids Bike: Boys And Girls| Ages 3-5
2. RoyalBaby Kids Bike For Boys And Girls With Training Wheels And Kickstand| Ages 3-8
3. JoyStar Totem Kids BMX Style Bicycles With Training Wheels: Boys And Girls| Ages 2-9
Use Repetitive Reciting To Coach Your Child In Other Sports

How To Teach A Kid To Ride A Bike: The Simple And Best Tricks

There are just two main things you need to do to get your child riding their bike solo and without training wheels. The first is to let them know that you are nearby and they are not going to get hurt.

The second is to allow their natural ability and reflexes to balance their bodies to take over the bike riding process. You do this by actively preventing their conscious mind from transferring its doubts and fears on to their subconscious.

If you understand the process and do it right, in most cases you can get any child riding their bikes solo very quickly. Here are the three simple steps for helping your child to learn how to ride a bicycle.

Always use a helmet on your child and yourself when riding a bicycle. It is also a good idea to use other protective gear such as knee and elbow pads, and protective gloves.

1. Reassure Your Child That You Will Not Let Them Fall Off The Bike

A dad teaching his daughter how to ride a bike by holding her bicycle and helping her ride.

Start the process with making sure that your child fully understands that there is no possibility of getting hurt during the learning process.

Go with the smallest (shortest) bike that is still practical for them to ride. If their feet can readily reach the ground and stabilize them from a fall, they will be more confident. You can always go up a size once they get used to riding the smaller bike.

Before they start peddling and moving forward, tilt the bike and let them see for themselves that either their own feet or your hold on them will keep them from falling. Demonstrate and practice this several times till they understand this.

And when they do get going, make sure you are always a few inches away from holding them safely as you will likely need to do this in the beginning.

2. Don’t Lecture Them On How To Ride A Bike

Don’t provide many suggestions for how to ride a bike or balance themselves. Only reinforce to them that you are always close enough to catch them from falling.

If you provide too much verbal instructions, it will make them overthink the bike riding process. Their bike riding will become all the more unnatural. Plus, this will imply to them that the process is very complicated. Their fear level will go even higher than it already is.

3. Allow Their Automatic Reflexes To Balance The Bicycle

Almost all of us healthy humans have a natural tendency to re-balance ourselves when our bodies go off kilter. Think back on a time when you lost your balance. An automatic and fast response (the righting reflex) would have kicked in to quickly try and get your body upright again.

You want your child to use this as much as possible when teaching them how to ride a bike. However, our conscious minds which are full of doubts and fears, can inhibit this reflex and cause your child to hesitate and fall.

The trick is to distract their conscious mind and keep it occupied so that their subconscious/automatic sense of balance dominates. Luckily, our conscious minds can concentrate on only one task at a time.

**Occupy Your Child’s Conscious Mind With A Repetitive Task**

Tell you child that you are going to hold them completely during the bike lesson. All they have to do is loudly call out a sequence of numbers. Go with one that is not too hard remember but still needs them to memorize a small pattern. You can also ask them to repeat back a string of words or a sentence you have made up.

A number sequence like “876-24315” works great. As they start peddling forward and with you holding on to them, have them continuously repeat this sequence out fairly loudly. This keeps their conscious mind busy and less able to transfer fear to the subconscious mind that instinctively knows how to balance our bodies.

Depending on your child’s ability and after some time of this, start releasing your hold on their bike for a few seconds at a time. Give them short bursts of solo riding and see how they are doing. If they are busy reciting the number sequence, they may not even realize that you are letting go.

Always make sure you are running alongside ready to catch them. Very soon they will be off on their own for longer periods. And solo bike riding soon thereafter. If you started with a smaller bike, have them ride it for a few more days. When their confidence and balance is more robust, transition to a bicycle of the right size.

Why This Works And Quickly Teaches Your Kid How To Ride A Bike

The biggest obstacle to riding a bike is a fear your child has of falling and getting hurt. When doubts occupy someones conscious mind, they hinder your child’s natural balancing abilities. Your job as a coach is only to remove interference that is preventing your child from learning how to ride their bike.

Our bodies automatically have the ability to balance ourselves, even on a bike. Keep the conscious mind focused on a repetitive task and allow the person’s balancing reflexes to do the heavy lifting.

Best Way For Teaching Your Child To Ride A Bike

As parents dealing with a difficult task of teaching a kid to ride a bike, there is a tendency to try out complex solutions. But sometimes easy answers give you the best results in cases like this.

Occupying your child’s mind with a mental task prevents their subconscious fears from interfering with the bicycle learning experience. Further, keep their thoughts free from the common advice people give kids to balance on a bike. This makes them overthink things and falter even more.

The easiest way to teach your kid to ride a bike is to let them fly free like a bird as soon as possible. Their innate balancing ability will help them ride the bike smoothly. You will be surprised at how quickly they will be cycling on their own. And enjoying their time riding their bikes with the rest of their friends.

Best Kids Bike For Learning How To Ride

Here are our top bicycle recommendations for kids who are learning bike riding.

1. Schwinn Krate Evo Classic Kids Bike: Boys And Girls| Ages 3-5

By Schwinn; Release Date: October 2020

Our Rating:

Krate bikes are making a comeback with Schwinn. This classic look from the sixties is elegantly crafted with a racing banana seat. The training wheels are great for getting a feel for bike riding. Once they are comfortable with learning the bike riding process, you can remove them. A nice feature for parents who are teaching their kids to ride a bike is an easy grip back handlebar to support beginners.

2. RoyalBaby Kids Bike For Boys And Girls With Training Wheels And Kickstand| Ages 3-8

By RoyalBaby; Release Date: October 2013

Our Rating:

3. JoyStar Totem Kids BMX Style Bicycles With Training Wheels: Boys And Girls| Ages 2-9

By JoyStar; Release Date: April 2020

Our Rating:

Use Repetitive Reciting To Coach Your Child In Other Sports

A common mistake parents and amateur coaches make with kids is that they provide too much verbal advice and suggestions. They spend time explaining and demonstrating certain techniques. As a result your child will overthink everything, be stressful and falter.

What a coach should be focusing on is removing things that inhibit and interfere with the kid’s ability to perform well. Usually this takes the form of hesitation and nervousness, specially when the children have to perform in a team or in front of an audience. All of this is driven by their conscious mind preventing their innate reflexes from taking over and excelling.

Getting them to repeatedly recite a number sequence or a set of words during practice will again keep their conscious minds busy and thus, unable to disrupt the natural flows of their automatic reflexes which allow them to perform the action correctly.

It works great with tennis strokes, baseball or cricket pitches/catches/swings, football throws/passes, and soccer set pieces, passes and dribbling.

Bicycle Riding

How To Teach A Kid To Ride A Bike: Best Way For A Child To Learn Bicycle Riding

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