I am currently thinking of getting my son a glide bike for Christmas. It is one of the bikes with no pedals that they push with their feet to get going & then glide kind of like a scooter. I have heard it called several different things. I am wondering if any of you have had any experience with them. If so do they work, are they easy for the kids to use? My son is 2.5yrs old and loves his tricycle but I think it is time to upgrade to a real sized bike. I however HATE training wheels. They confuse the kids and make learning to ride that much harder. I figured the glide bike seemed like a nice training tool.
I did get my son one for christmas and WOW. He loves it and he is able to go pretty far once he builds up enough speed to lift his feet. We even take him to the skate park by our house and let him go off the ramps he loves it and the older kids get a kick out of seeing a 2.5yr old going off the ramps. Now just need him to get the peddling down off his tric so we can put him on a big boy bike.
I can only recommend them. My older son got one for his 3rd birthday. They are great for developing balance.He loved it and he could switch to a "real bike" with about 3.5 years, without ever using training wheels. My little one just turned three. He is way behind in his motor development, but just started to walk with the foot to floor bike.
hi! we had a "learner bike" or "laufrad" for our 3 year old and it was GREAT! i really cannot say enough about it! he started just kind of walking while sitting on the seat and within a month he was kind of running and coasting for great distances. he would go faster than i could walk! it was great to teach him balance and he learned how to ride a pedal bike (without training wheels) in 1 week...so, i highly recommend them! the scoot is a good brand in the US (we used the puky from germany) because it adjusts to fit so many different heights...and, it doesn't have a handlebar that the child might run into if falling. the most important thing to remember is to get one that fits your son...
if you want more info, let me know!
-B.
I don't know if this helps because I have never owned one of these for my kids, but I have <seen> kids on them and they look great! If my kids were little again, I'd get it. I agree, the glide bike looks much easier to transition to a regular 2 wheeler than going through the awkward training wheel phase. A glide bike seems like a more natural step. Personally, I'd go for it! :)
I have a friend from Germany with a 6yo boy and she says this is all they use over there. No training wheels to be seen anywhere! I've seen young kids whiz around on them with no problem and they all seem exceptionally well made.
We got one for my daughter (who will be 3 in Dec) about 8 months ago. She has that and a bike with training wheels. I think it helping her with her balance in the big bike, she is not nervouse about turning corners and such. She just started riding her big girl bike about a month ago.We got ours when Performance Bike had a huge sale so it only cost us around $50 shipped, thought it would be interesting to try, so look at their holiday soecial if you are going to buy. Its hard to say cause she is still young how much of a differencde it is making, but I believed it is helping with her balance. Hope this helped.
I just bought one for my son(who just turned 3) from Balancebikeshop.com. It is a new bike called a Hobby Bike and it has pedals that go on once they have the scooting thing down. It is a really nice quality bike and the man who runs the shop is very accommodating. The only problem is that it is too tall for my son right now and he is big child. I would imagine he will be able to use it in 3 to 6 months. My sister-in-law is a big fan of balance bikes and suggested in the meantime that I buy a 10 inch bike a take off the training wheels. The problem with using regular bikes to learn to scoot is that they are not as stable as the balance bikes. Hope this helps.
Our neighbor used one of those for their son to teach him how to ride a bike. He is only 4 and knows how to ride a bike with no training wheels and learned when he was 3. I wish I knew about these, I would have used one for my daughter. I would reccommend using one of these instead of a bike with training wheels!
