Teaching children to ride on the road

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sgeorge
Posts: 3
Joined: 9 Jan 2021, 4:03pm

Teaching children to ride on the road

Post by sgeorge »

Hi!

I have a 9 year old who I feel is just about ready to learn to ride on the road.
I'd like to take advantage of the relatively quiet roads during lockdown to try this myself.
Plus I don't think any bikability training will be running at the moment.
I've seen the bikeability manuals but I am not a trained bikeability instructor and it seemed to me to (necessarily) focus on how to teach a group rather than 1 to 1. I don't really need any formal certification of her skills, just to see that she is improving and still enjoying it.

I was wondering if there is a source of simple tips and pointers for teaching your own child to ride safely on the road?

Also anything that we should be able to do before starting on this?
She is confident riding on her own at the moment on paths in parks, but not close to other people except me and not on pavements (too narrow/bumpy/obstacles).
She has a few years experience riding on the road on a tandem trailer with me.

Thanks,
Simon
Jdsk
Posts: 24639
Joined: 5 Mar 2019, 5:42pm

Re: Teaching children to ride on the road

Post by Jdsk »

There's a Cycling UK page:
https://www.cyclinguk.org/article/cycling-guide/cycling-road-children
but are you looking for something more detailed?

Jonathan
ClappedOut
Posts: 585
Joined: 30 May 2020, 12:43am

Re: Teaching children to ride on the road

Post by ClappedOut »

my boy 9 yrs old we ride 5-6 miles and he has a I believe "jump bike" in the x rated make we bought barely used from someone for £40 and a quick once over and a replacement v brake preload part for pennies. (it's a rubbish bike but good enough until he decides what he wants)

We had an industrial estate up the road and Sundays a great time to practice as businesses closed.

moving on we then went to him in the middle of 2 adults and is now okay under instruction following with clear instructions of we will be coming upto a junction, stopping and going left etc.

What I'm saying is teach them what will be expected and in advance.

I don't know of any school cycling schemes in our area, our daughter who is older benefitted from this.
hayers
Posts: 168
Joined: 27 Apr 2016, 1:50pm

Re: Teaching children to ride on the road

Post by hayers »

ClappedOut wrote: 30 Mar 2021, 9:56pm
What I'm saying is teach them what will be expected and in advance.
Very good advice. If you have one, a talk through manoeuvres on one of those road playmats with a toy car/bike can explain things quite easily.

Another thing is check they know their left & right! I'd not realised that our eldest has a bit of a block on this so after some confusion I started using "bell side" and "gear side" as more reliable.
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