Learning to Ride a Bike *without* Training Wheels
Tuesday, January 12, 2010 4:01 pmDoug Engelbart talks about how he taught his kids to ride a bike:
It turns out, you don’t have to steer if you just get a gentle, even back and forth see-sawing motion going with the handlebars as you roll along, the back and forth motion usually corrects the tilting soon enough and you won’t fall. In fact, someone with little or no bike riding experience at all can just see-saw their handlebars as they pedal and mostly not fall.
So this is how Doug taught kids to ride. First he would show them how he could see-saw his handlebars back and forth while he pedaled slowly on his bike. Then he would ask them to try the same thing as he walked alongside, holding onto the bike loosely just to help it maintain a reasonable speed, and to keep it/them from falling when they over- or under-corrected. As long as they kept moving forward and see-sawing the handlebars, they would naturally start to get a feel for this direct relationship between tilting, steering and untilting, and gradually start refining the motions, and pretty soon off they’d go.
I thought it was pretty cool.
Dug Song says:
October 29th, 2010 at 6:31 pm
You know, I did the same thing with my son at 4, taking the pedals off his 12″ bike, going down the gradual slope of the sidewalk in front of the house. It only took him 2 days to get the hang of it, coasting completely feet off all the way down. I don’t remember it being so easy when I learned…