The best-laid schemes of cycling dads: How to get your kids into riding a bike

If you have a passion for cycling – and if you’ve found your way to this article, chances are you do – then you’ll know that one of the shiny joys of this pastime is when we get to do it with friends and (hopefully) family.

From almost the first moment when we found out we were having a baby, I experienced tremendous excitement (along with the obvious nerves) about all the things I love that I’d soon get to share with my future son or daughter, and the hope that they’d find the same delight in those things too.

I read a few books on parenting before my son was born, and learnt a couple of interesting psychological tropes about babies and parenthood which have inspired me, a few years down the line, to pen this article on the long and winding road to turning my child into a cyclist.

First things first. This wasn’t in any of the books, but let me start with a faulty assumption I made. I assumed that every adult I know can swim and ride a bike. However, to my amazement, I recently discovered that two of the brightest people I know – one an Oxford-educated doctor and the other a super-successful partner at a large law firm – can’t ride a bike or swim, respectively.

The only reason I cite their achievements and education is to point out that though these traits can sometimes be ascribed to geography, or societal or educational anomalies, that wasn’t the case with these two. The non-bike rider attended perhaps the biggest cycling university in the world and the non-swimmer grew up on the coast. Somehow, learning to swim or cycle just passed them by.

After stumbling upon this revelation, I resolved not to let cycling pass by my son.

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So, back to those baby books – and the two psychological heuristics that stuck with me while reading them, which were ‘modelling’ and ‘referencing.’ Without wishing to wade into a nature/nurture side-quest here, the books taught me that some percentage (probably most) of my son’s behaviour, character, and passions will be governed by his biology, his ‘nature’.

And you just can’t fight biology. Whatever the size of the percentage I could influence (or nurture) basically came down to ‘environment’ and ‘encouragement’. There was lots I could do to help a passion for cycling take root. Modelling is exactly what it sounds like: Make bikes part of life, be seen riding bikes.

Cycling as a way of life

The books talk about modelling good behaviour you want to instantiate, everything from the way we speak to and treat others, down to things like not spending too much time looking at your phone in front of your children when you could be reading a book instead.

Similarly, to eventually get to this hazy ephemeral dream wherein my son and I would go on cycling adventures together, I had to hope that a passion for riding would take hold early, and take hold strongly. So, I found myself overtly brimming with great enthusiasm whenever there was an opportunity to look at a bike, or touch a bike, or watch people cycling by. Perhaps too much, but still.

Then it came to getting him onto a bike. This first happened over a few days in Spain. I guess he was two and a bit at the time. He had a scooter that he wasn’t really using. He’d push it like a trolley and showed no interest in getting on it. I think we’d bought him a balance bike by this point, but it felt a way off yet.

So we decided to model cycling. In warm sunshine, along a coastal cycle path, with a seat on the back of my bike. He seemed to enjoy it, he liked the wind in his (helmeted) hair, and I remember making whoops of excitement as we went over bumps, so he’d know these were sensations to be enjoyed and sought, rather than loathed and avoided.

This is what the books call ‘referencing’, and it’s about kids checking with their parents to see how they’re ‘supposed’ to feel about new experiences and sensations. A few days later, as we boarded the plane home, I noticed a pain in my side which I attributed to straining some muscle horsing around in the pool.  It was only on further reflection that I realised it was perhaps from my son poking me in the ribs repeatedly whilst on the bike, uttering the words ‘faster daddy’.

Baby speed junkie status confirmed!

Fostering a ‘love of wheels’

Nevertheless, despite taking to his scooter quite rapidly after this, he resisted his balance bike for many months, and in fact it wasn’t until he saw a friend in the park on a balance bike zooming around that I think he saw the potential.

We got a Strider bike that was ubiquitous at his nursery. Specialized make an awesome racy balance bike (in carbon too!) that my inner monologue kept encouraging me to buy, but in the end, and thinking he’d grow out of it quickly, we went for the cheaper Strider.

It was really well-made, and the solid tyres meant that it took a decent amount of abuse, being thrown in the back of cars, and trapsing over any surface without me worrying about punctures. It was also pretty light (which as any new parent will tell you, is THE most important metric by far).

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As soon as he was old enough, I thought we could kill several birds with one stone. We could continue to encourage cycling as a way of life, familiarise him with life on wheels, and make commutes to nursery both faster and more fun. It was a 20-minute walk/push in his pram each way, which meant four journeys a day. Or about five minutes by bike. Frustratingly, I didn’t have a bike that could take a child’s seat, they were all carbon, and even my titanium gravel bike, that would have otherwise been perfect, had a solid carbon seat tube that wouldn’t accept the clamping force of a seat.

And then I found Thule’s Chariot. God, he loved this. The Wagon, as it came to be known, changed our ‘commuting’ life. For starters, he was keen every morning to jump into it and head to nursery. Getting out of the house was less of a daily battle. It was a far shorter and far ‘funner’ journey for him, and I think he probably raved about the Chariot more than even me.

It also saved me 15 minutes per leg (of which I was doing four), so essentially an hour a day, or five hours a week. That’s mad. By switching to the Chariot, I was getting back two-thirds of a full working day in time saved per week. It also meant we could go on adventures together. It’s suspended, so we had a few adventures on tow paths, and through parks. It really helped foster his love of wheels I think.

Let there be electric

Just as he started school, necessity required we upgrade both his bike, and our commute. His new school was at the top of one of London’s highest points, and the road there is long and steep. He was outgrowing the Chariot, and I’m certain I could not have dragged us to the top of this hill twice a day come rain or shine.

Electricity was what was needed. I was initially cynical about e-bikes, and early versions I tried were unable to alter this perception. And then I tested a Tern e-cargo bike a couple of years ago and it changed my mind. Nay my life. They’re amazingly well thought-out, well built, deceptively fun to ride, fast, comfortable, manoeuvrable, and reliable. I saw and rode their newly announced HSD at Eurobike last year, with more power (up to 75Nm) and more carrying capacity (up to 200kg, with the rear rack capable of supporting 80kg, i.e. another adult).

It was a timely launch. It’s expensive, there’s no getting around that. But I was going to be riding it twice a day, and it was going to save me even more time that the Chariot. The 30-minute walk, or 20-minute drive, was a six or seven-minute cycle. That was an hour and a half per day, nearly eight hours a week saved. Big gulp. I ordered one, along with the Thule Yepp 2 seat which clamps and locks to the Tern’s rack.

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It arrived days before he started school. It’s one of the best bikes I’ve ever ridden and is as ubiquitous around North London school drop-offs on traffic heavy streets as the luxury 4x4s that fly past. I am astounded at how much I’ve used it. My only irritations with it are its Bosch smart system; the motor is awesome, smooth and quiet, and with a tremendous torquey pull off the line, but the system doesn’t play nice with my Karoo, or any other computer for that matter. It won’t send my power data, which I’d love to see, to any other computer, guarding it selfishly. And secondly, the charging port cover is a mite tricky to close.

Other than that, what a bike. My son loved it as much I did. I tested the Dji Action Cam a few months ago, and one of the best things I did with it is strap it to my back, so it could record a rear facing view of my son. His excitement and glee is brilliant and palpable as he laughs with delight as we hit speedbumps. And he’s taken to crying out with “Yahoooos” as we do. If you hear one yelled from the back of a speeding Tern in North London, that’s us.

… Gang aft agley

This way of life I really felt was bleeding through into his enjoyment of bikes. When it was time to upgrade his balance bike to a pedal bike, I was excited to do so. Again, seeking the intersection of lightness and strength, I found Frog bikes. I wanted to get the ‘frog’ green, but the spotty polka dots is what my son chose. Ah well.

It’s a rather wonderful bike, and I appreciate the build quality and attention to small details, the completely covered chain, the forceful Tektro brakes, the mudguards, and slim handlebars and grips. You might have to have kids to not find this next sentence slightly amusing, but it looks like a proper bike… Of course it is, but so many kids’ things are flimsy facsimiles of adult versions, cheap and plasticky, but this looks like a full nicely spec’d adult bike, just smaller.

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Here's where the years of groundwork, the referencing, the modelling, and the hours and hours on wheels would pay dividends. Or so I thought. As the old saying goes, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.

My son all but refused to ride the bike for the first six months, and no amount of efforts, entreaties, pleading, cajoling, or outright bribery seemed to work. There are cycling schools everywhere, specialising in teaching little ones to ride, and we thought about this. There’s a statistic that kids listen to their parents something like 800 per cent less than other authority figures in their lives, so what he wouldn’t try for us, perhaps he would for a stranger.

Oh, the ignominy. In three short sessions, many places offer guarantees they’ll get your child cycling. We were about to pull the trigger, and then human nature took over. It wasn’t bribery or begging that won out, but the strongest (apparently) motivator of human behaviour, which seemed blindingly obvious in retrospect: fear of loss, or in this case, fear of missing out.

Not being able to participate in rides with his friends was all the impulse he needed, and as long as it ‘appeared’ to be his idea, his acquiescence, it seemed to go well. We started by removing the pedals as a stepping stone from the balance bike, and of course I’ve obtained the sore-back rite-of-passage running behind him holding him up. Speed is your friend here, is the most useful advice I have. More speed is more stable.

So finally we’re there. A little behind schedule, and utterly on his own timetable, but there nonetheless. I find myself eager for the next peak now. Metaphorically of course.

Towing him up the physical peaks is a job for an e-bike.