I have three small kids with ages ranging between 3–9 years old.. and we currently own no fewer than five children’s bicycles.
Bicycling is one of the most basic and fun activities that kids can do for sports and for commuting. Where I live, bicycling liberates kids from about 7 years old to independently pedal to school and sports class, join the rest of the neighbourhood kids to go to the local supermarket, playgrounds, library.
If you start choosing a bicycle for your child, there’s quite a choice — from 12'’ wheel size balance bikes to 26'’ teenagers bikes with prices from 99EUR supermarket bikes to 2999EUR electric-assist kids mountain bike.
Over the last 7 years, we’ve bought and used 7 different kids bikes. We’ve done research and made mistakes. We’ve also hit the jackpot with a few bikes.
Here’s what we’ve learned..
Start on a balance bike
The best way for small kids to learn how to bicycle is to use a balance bike.
The best age to learn bicycling on a balance bike is as soon as the child is comfortable running and jumping. We’ve put all our kids on the balance bike when they where about 2 years old.
The best balance bikes are the ones that are light and have a low minimum seat height to allow practicing as early as possible.
Both my daughters were riding the balance bike comfortably and rolling around without their feet touching the ground by the time were 3 years old and my son was rolling around comfortably on the pedal-less bike at just a little over 2 years old and switched to a pedal-bike a few months after turning 3.
Stabiliser wheels on a “normal” pedal bike make learning slower for kids, since the child is leaning on the stabiliser wheels and is not actively balancing the bike. Also — starting on a pedal bike means that the newbie bicyclist needs to learn balancing AND pedalling at the same time.
A daughter of a family friend started learning on a pedal bike with stabiliser wheels and while she is taller and more athletic compared to my daughters, it took her longer to learn to comfortably bicycle and she was a less confident bicyclist in the beginning.
Fit beats spec
The most important thing about your child’s bicycle is whether they fit well on it. This means being able to easily get on and off the bike, having a comfortable and natural position while riding and having the reach to do tight turns, pull the brakes and switch the gears.
This is especially crucial with smaller kids (3–5 years old), since they are less experienced and clumsier. Young kids also grow the fastest relative to their size, so there’s a temptation to buy a bigger bike.
The mistake I made was buying a bike that was just slightly too big for my second child. I bought it, since it was a nice bike. I thought that she’d grow into the bike quickly anyway and skipping one wheel size would mean she can use the fancy bike for longer.
The result was that my daughter developed a fear of her bike — it was hard to start and stop riding on due to the frame size. This discouraged her from biking and she definitely biked less than she would have done on a well-fitting bike.
At minimum, check the height of the child and their inseam height against the bike’s fit specification (most respectable brands have a nice table). If possible, I strongly recommend having the child try riding the bike. That’s especially true, if the child is in the lower end of the size that fits the bike.
If the bike you want is even “just a little” too big .. I recommend buying another smaller bike that fits well. Even if it’s used, or less fancy.
Beware of “supermarket” brands
Low-price “supermarket” children’s bicycles can be incredibly heavy and have sneaky hard to spot problems with fit — brake levers not meant for small hands, too wide “q-factor” (width between pedals) for small legs, too short crank length, etc.
When looking for our first kids bike, I saw a cheap starter bike + stabiliser wheels meant for 3-year olds to learn bicycling that weighed about 10 kilograms. We ended up buying a 99EUR balance for our daughter that weighs a smidge under 2kg! That’s a weight difference of 5 times. Extra 8kg is a huge difference for a 3-year old to lift and carry. That 99EUR bike has served all our 3 kids very well.
You can find a good bicycle weight reference by looking at bikes from reputable bicycle manufacturers, especially manufacturers that specialise on kids bikes. Don’t buy a bike that’s significantly heavier than the typical “good brand” bikes, especially for pre-school kids.
It’s harder to evaluate other important parts of the “bike fit” — reaching the brake levers comfortably, having a suitable q-factor and crank length, saddle position relative to pedals. Buying from a well-known bicycle brand or from a brand specialising on kids bikes is the most likely way to get a good fit.
Used is totally fine
Kids grow out of their bikes quickly — usually within 2 years in the pre-school age and 3–4 years later on. This means that there are a lot kids bikes sold on the second-hand market.
Kids bicycles are usually quite simple to maintain and fix, so even if the used bike needs a bit of maintenance or tuning, chances are it’s cheap.
We’ve bought two of our kids bikes second hand. This has allowed us to get a better bike than we would have otherwise bought. In both cases we bough from a private seller on an internet marketplace and it worked out well.
Avoid fancy tech
There are some really exciting fancy tech on kids bikes, such as carbon fiber fork or air suspension forks, oil-actuated disk brakes, tubeless tires. There’s even a balance bike with a carbon fiber frame!
I recommend seriously considering if you need this fancy technology. It can be fragile and hard to maintain.
I bought a bike for my 5 year old with an air suspension fork and disk brakes and have now had to fix bent disk rotors twice as well as spending several hours doing maintenance on the air fork.
We’ve never had issues with rigid aluminium forks and rim brakes. There’s absolutely zero noticeable performance difference for my 5 year old kids from having the disk brakes and air spring.
If I could fo back, I would choose a lightweight, simple to maintain and as durable as possible solution for the kids bike.
There is some tech that is worth having, though, in my experience. An internal gear hub and belt drive can be more expensive, but will require much less maintenance than a chain, cassette and derailleur system.
Kid fits the bike vs bike fits the kid
My 6 year old daughter most likely wanted a pink bicycle with a comfy seating position, a wicker basket at the front and ribbons hanging out from the edges of the handlebar. I mean — she didn’t know what she wanted, but in my mind, this bike would have fit her personality.
I, her father, on the other hand wanted a bicycle for her that I myself would have loved as a 6 year old boy — a cool aggressive mountain bike with suspension and thick tires and aggressive stickers.
So — we “agreed” that we will buy her the fancy mountain bike with chunky tires and an aggressive riding position.
Of course it turned out that she was uncomfortable on the aggressive bike and didn’t really care about the chunky tires and suspension. We ended up getting her the next size bike sooner than she would have needed it and loaned the mountain bike to his nephew who is a 6 year old boy that loves aggressive chunky bikes with suspension.
My learning from it is that it’s not only important that the kid fits on the bike. It’s also important that the bike fits the kid :).
