Project Balance Bike for my Autistic son.

Hi,

This is a story that is yet to have an ending. As you do, I posted on this forum some months ago in the vain hope someone might have an answer for the slightly obscure thing I was looking for. My chosen challenge was to find a balance bike for my son. He is autistic and is eight years old and quite tall. Nothing you can get off the shelf is remotely tall enough.

Low and behold an extremely generous offer was provided by Mick Rushton. It’s not the first time Either

I have recently purchased a tricycle for my son as a bicycle was just far too much to cope with to balance, steer, brake…

He loves bicycles in fact anything with wheels gets him overly excited. Like father like son.

Mick made contact with me on the forum. He has offered to build a balance bike that will suit my son. We are trying to give it a chance to have 20 inch wheels or 24, or 26 ( or God forbid, any of those new fangled sizes) so the bike will still be useable as he grows, and it will just have a brake on the rear.

What I have real difficulty with is now telling you exactly how I feel because I cannot describe how grateful I am to Mick offering his time and skills to me in this situation. I have never come across such generosity of spirit before and knowing that he’s done it before just makes me try and think of ways in which I can say thank you. so if you have any suggestions please feel free to comment :D.

So where are we with the build….?

http://i970.photobucket.com/albums/ae186/AndyRT69/b1075e61353eed2e7ca7cb6ad5a0056c.jpg%5B/img%5D

I think Singletrack should have a prize at the end of each year for an individual on the forum that personifies the spirit of what we love about this community. I hope the guys in STW towers read this and agree with me and make it happen. Mick deserves that prize.

More updates as we get them as the build progresses.

Looks good. I’m sure your son will love it.

I know he will, although we are not sure what colour to go for…

Enjoy and looks forward to the write ups and the first video

Unsung heroes award is not a bad idea

Cheers Junkyard, Mick is a worthy candidate

Unsung heroes award is not a bad idea

I think there is already such an award. I seem to remember SFB winning something along those lines a few years back.

Never seen it.

I’ll post up more as it happens, just in case I can help any other families out there with this…

Plus, Mick deserves the publicity

That Sir is the Sum of Awe.

I’m glad you agree

Just curious – is there a reason you couldn’t take the cranks off a conventional bike to make a balance bike for your son?

This is lovely to read.
Just an FYI, I think weeride we’re talking about making 20/24/26″ runner bikes for this very reason, may well be worth dropping Matt an email – email on the site.
I sure hope it was weeride, a brand in the industry certainly were making noise about this…

Kcr…geometry is all wrong

I think SFB’s award was for photographs wasn’t it? Anyway – enough of this talk. The balance bikes are relatively quick and easy projects to practice things on – in this case I’ve got a new brazing set-up / fire proof cave to try out. If I’m cutting and brazing practice tubes, they might as well do something useful. And making bikes (as a hobby) is fun.

If Andy is happy with the finished product then a few quid to the nice people at http://www.motivation.org.uk/ would be more than enough reward for me.

We are at opposite ends of the country so trials have been made with my 9 yr old who is a similar size to Andy’s son. He rides a 24″ Islabike, but needed a 20″ if scooting (feet need to be much nearer the floor). So if Andy started with a regular bike then it would have been too small to transition onto pedals. We are also thinking that the transition to pedals will be a rather slow process – hence the need for plenty of growing room. So it will begin with 20″ wheels but with room for 24″ to gain a bit more height and rolling ability.

Like last time we will be using front wheels both ends to keep things narrow and avoid clipping heels. Disc brake on the back to allow wheel size swap – not decided if it needs a disc mount on the front or not. Might need to shout out to the STW folks for a front fork that can be cut down (1 1/8 threadless rigid) rather than make one from scratch. An old Kona P2 would be great if anyone has one surplus to requirements.

Tubes are now cleaned up for brazing and vent holes drilled – just need to find a few hours one evening this week and we’ll have a front triangle 🙂

I’m watching this with interest as I am a parent gov of my sons special school and I’m on the students committed and we want to start a project on getting all the pupils (where possible) to ride bikes. Hats off to you and Mick for doing this.

Hi Mick. It’s great to see you doing another one!

Andrew is staying with us at the mo and still talks about the “Braw” bike. The very best of luck with this one!

Oh – and of course – if there’s anything you guys need: dont hesitate to ask.

Ron

Cheers Ron!

Flippinheckler, drop me a line. I’m about to get seriously involved at my son’s school as a fund raiser, as he has just moved schools and will be in a special needs school in September.

Anything I can do will help in passing on the good deeds will make me happy ( for want of a long drawn out explanation for the commitment and extra the staff in these schools put in).

I want to try and organise an annual off road sportive down here at the start of The SDW ( Winchester). So many bridleways it seems rude not to.

Mick, I’ll be making a donation 😀

I’m watching this with interest as I am a parent gov of my sons special school and I’m on the students committed and we want to start a project on getting all the pupils (where possible) to ride bikes. Hats off to you and Mick for doing this.

it depends on how old your kids are, obviously no good for this particular kid but for slightly smaller kids, strider balance bikes do a big one which comes in a 16″ wheel size, aimed at kids up to 10.

with autistic children the issue is over stimulation, and it takes a while for them to get to cope with learning about pedalling, steering, balancing etc.

I think there is a significant gap in the market, but thankfully there aren’t that many autistic children out there to warrant a large balance bike being grout to the market, but who knows…

Just wondered, because I’ve done some work with teaching kids with coordination problems, and in some cases also autism, to ride. We used bikes with pedals removed and saddles down, reintroducing the pedals once the children had acquired balance.
Just an alternative option that might be suitable for some children if a dedicated balance bike is not available.

Hi Kcr

I appreciate it is swivel to remove cranks etc, but I am just one of those people that puts everything in a specific box. I recognise it was a solution to others to do as you suggest, but I just wanted to give my son the best I can. It’s hard enough to get him to enjoy new things, so I like to remove any obstacles to that goal. Besides, it is a great fun project too 😀