He’s knocking on for 3 and has been riding his balance bike since he was 2 1/2 (since the summer). We got his sister a wooden balance bike when she was 3 1/2 and then got a (pink) Ridgeback Melody 16 for her 4th birthday and she rode it immediatley without stabilisers. As the wooden balance bike was getting a little tired and he was always wanting to ride it, we got him the Hotwalk when he was 2 1/2 as he came with my to my LBS and started whizzing around on it with massive confidence compared with the wobbly wooden one.
He’s so much more into arsing about on it than his sister ever was and is always looking to ride along beams and down steps etc – they love watching the Danny Macaskill videos and without any encouraging, he pops wheelies on it (with his feet on the ground of course) and does 180s and bar spins! He also doesn’t care about falling over and despite a couple of big offs at the BMX track (usually after not quite making it up the steep bits and rolling backwards into a heap before I can catch him!) he just picks himself up, tells me how brave he is and carries on!
That isn’t his sister in the clip (she’s still only just 5) but a mate’s daughter who’s showing great promise after a season’s racing in the nationals, so a good inspiration for my two!!
We were in Devon during half term so I stuck him on his sisters Ridgeback on the hard sandy beach and with a bit of a help starting from me he managed to ride it quite a way on his own so the balance bike has worked wonders. Am confident he’d be riding a pedal bike very quickly if we bought him one for his 3rd birthday but he enjoys the balance bike so much I think we’ll wait until the summer.
The kids see me coming in twice a week covered in mud with a big smile on my face and I’m sure that has inspired them to follow suit and it is a great feeling to see them getting so much enjoyment from something I enjoy so much myself.
