Cycling UK Forum

I took the opposite approach, buying an Islabike to give my daughter the best possible chance of learning to ride - and so it proved.

Her friends are still lumbering along, stabilised, on heavyweight Barbiemobiles whilst she is, literally, riding rings around them.

Your "opposite approach" is the approach I had in mind, but I was over-ruled.
We've been happily married long enough so we always agree on everything. This comes through compromise ............ so I had to compromise.

Anyway, thanks guys!
Pirate Bike should arrive on Monday. The evenings are still light enough for a lesson or two next week hopefully.
(fingers crossed)

If this bike-riding thing takes off, I will get my way and buy him an Islabike, trouble is, his Islabike will be a better bike than his mother's bike! She'll be as jealous as heck ............................ but she'll have to buy her own!

Bonefish Blues wrote:I took the opposite approach, buying an Islabike to give my daughter the best possible chance of learning to ride - and so it proved.

Her friends are still lumbering along, stabilised, on heavyweight Barbiemobiles whilst she is, literally, riding rings around them.

Most of this is, I suspect, about how much help the parents are willing to invest in helping the child to ride. If they've bought an Islabike it will typically be more than average, so while as a Bikeability instructor I see a pretty good correlation between good bikes and competent riders I don't think it's all about the bike.
A couple of years back one of the girls had IB's top of the range, hydraulic disc brake equipped MTB. There was no indication that it ever got dirty, and while its rider did okay there were other folk in the class on pretty hopeless things who could easily outride her.

The key negative above is "stabilised": if they're still using stabilisers then I'd guess there's probably little parental input in to how to ride. My daughter, adopted just short of 6, same with a stabilised Barbiemobile. I took the stabilisers off, turned it in to a balance bike and had her riding in very short order. It's very easy to ride rings round a stabilised bike, you don't need anything swish to manage that.

I think Islabikes and similar are Good Things, and that they encourage children to ride. But even a BSO is a fabulous thing to a pre-school child, and to get going on two wheels you don't need to spend IB sorts of money. If you can that's hardly a problem, but people shouldn't get the idea it's needed.

Pete.

Good post.

We are perhaps in the position where we can, at least with things like this, go for the best possible option.

Interestingly, our daughter is adopted too, but came to us earlier in her life pre cycling, but with some developmental delays.

Cycling has proved to be if not a tipping point, a very very important part of her development, and the sheer joy and confidence that she has derived and the fact that she can do something her peers can't, after months and years of the converse being the case has been beyond price.

Dusty in here...

Funny that, suddenly dusty here, too

MiniBob wouldn't try without stabilisers for a long while, at nearly seven she has finally given it a long enough go to 'get it', an IslaBike is therefore being bought for later this year...

MicroBob, nearly five, has (very) poor eyesight which makes balance an issue anyway... He really enjoyed a recent ride on a KMX though, so that's another one.


It's not always parental input that leaves stabilisers on.

Just like to say, that the Decathlon Pirate Bike arrived today, and I'm VERY impressed indeed.

It has mudguards, front and rear lights, a tooting horn, a chainguard, small-hands brake levers, it came with a full set of tools, a kick-stand .............. and fully set up in that the brakes worked and the chain was adjusted. I had to fit the pedals and straighten the 'bars, but that was it.

Brake levers are excellent.