Frugal Babe

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Our Six Dollar Balance Bike

June 3, 2012 By Frugal Babe

Our son loves to ride his bike.  He’s been riding a bike for over a year now, with training wheels.  He does a great job pedaling, and usually rides so fast that I have to jog to keep up with him.  But he definitely relies on the training wheels for balance.

We had heard of balance bikes, and one of our son’s friends loves hers.  But the ones I had found on Craigslist were usually at least $50, and the brand new ones are mostly in the $60 – $90 range.

Once again, Goodwill to the rescue.  A few weeks ago, I went looking for a small bike there, and found a little Huffy that was small enough for our son to stand flat footed with the seat under him.  It was six dollars.

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Once we got home, we took off the pedals, and we had a balance bike.  He absolutely loves it.  Almost every day he asks if we can go out and ride it, and he loves to cruise down the driveway without letting his feet touch the ground at all.  When we go on long rides, he opts for his bigger bike with training wheels, as he’s able to go much faster on flat ground with that bike.  But it’s amazing how much his balance has improved in the last couple weeks with this new bike.  The first day we tried it, he didn’t want to pick up both feet at the same time, but by the second day, he asked me if he could go down the driveway “fifty times” because he was having so much fun.

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Our Goodwill almost always has kid-sized bikes, and I often see very small ones like this.  Taking the pedals off takes just a few minutes, and the bikes are usually very inexpensive.  If you’ve been wanting a balance bike for your kiddo but don’t want to spend a lot of money, this might be the solution you need.  If it’s got snazzy white and purple wheels, even better.

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Filed Under: kids, thrift stores 6 Comments

Comments

  1. Barb @ A Life in Balance says

    June 4, 2012 at 11:24 am

    We bought 2 balance bikes for our youngest children last year, and they loved them. For 2 older boys, we took the pedal parts completely off their bikes, and they learned how to ride without the pedals. I think it’s a great way for the kids to learn how to ride. My daughter is still struggling a bit with the balancing; she moved up to a slightly bigger sized bike this year without the pedals. We’re hoping she’ll learn this year.

    Reply
  2. bogart_yahoo says

    June 4, 2012 at 2:13 pm

    We followed a similar trajectory — my son’s about a year older than yours.  Our sequence was, bike with training wheels, which was given to him as a gift.  He rode that for awhile and then outgrew it and we got him a bigger bike — but the original giver (of the first bike) helped select it and in all honesty far too much (IMO) stressed to DS that he was now “big” and should ride without training wheels.  So he went from comfortable kid on comfortable (though too smallish) bike to kid incapable of riding independently on bike that was (compared to what he was used to) big and lacked training wheels but he was TOTALLY unwilling to consider resuming use of training wheels and also really not that interested in/able to learn how to manage/ride the larger bike.  At that point he was the age your son is now.

    Frustrated, with his consent I took the old bike and pulled the pedals off.  I removed the entire mechanism, and my DH cut the chain with a hacksaw — which, of course, pretty much ruins the old bike for anything other than a balance bike, but so it goes (But I think I would worry about having those metal bits (that the pedals screw into) sticking out — look to me like a scrape/cut waiting to happen?).  And DS started using it and — LO! — he learned how to ride a bike.  I forget at what point we introduced the balance bike but I can say that he was not a month past his 5th birthday when he started riding his pedal bike independently.  He still struggles with uphills and uneven ground, but overall, a very confident (too confident?) kid!

    I had heard that balance bikes can be risky on hills because of the lack of brakes, and I have to say our experience is consistent with this concern — we used it mostly on the flat but live in a hilly area and DS definitely experienced some moments of concern when we’d get to even fairly minor hills, and would opt against riding the balance bike.  

    Reply
    • Frugal Babe says

      June 5, 2012 at 11:30 am

      We wondered if we should remove the whole pedal assembly, but it doesn’t seem to be a problem, and there are no sharp edges.  The chain has a good chain guard, and nothing seems to be getting in the way of his kicking.  I can imagine that a bike like this could be a problem on hills.  But our town is completely flat – the only inclined area we could find for him to practice on was our driveway :-)  It actually helps to have a slight incline, since it allows them to coast and practice balancing with their feet up.  Other than our driveway though, everywhere we go is flat.  So most of the time, he prefers to ride his bike with training wheels – and we’re in no hurry to take those off. 

      Reply
  3. JenniferA says

    June 5, 2012 at 12:39 pm

    Our youngest never had training wheels. She went straight from the balance bike to a real bike at around age 5. It took her all of ten minutes to be riding solo. Being able to coordinate balance and steering is where it is at and the balance bikes let them do this at their own pace–one foot down, two feet down and walking along, whatever. It’s how toddlers get around in Germany!

    Reply
  4. Jamie says

    June 12, 2012 at 7:11 pm

    Glad to see someone doing this. Balance bikes are such a great idea but so pricey! Nice work!

    Reply
  5. Freedom | Rethinking the Dream says

    June 14, 2012 at 5:52 am

    We were going to go the balance bike route, but our daughter tried one and didn’t like it.  Instead she learned to balance by riding a razor scooter.  You stand up instead of sit, but the act of balancing is pretty much the same.  She got so good at balancing on the scooter that when we finally removed the training wheels from her bike, she was off and riding all by herself in less than a day. 

    Reply

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