Bicycles, Your Kid, and You
Making their memories as good as your own

It's more than likely that some of your fondest childhood memories include times when you were on bicycles – yours and your friends’. During the time of our lives when we were most carefree and on the go, our bicycles were our means of transportation, our freedom, our sport, our status symbol, and even our best friends. At that time in our lives, we did not install a new car stereo, we put cards in the bicycle spokes to create that “astounding” sound when we rode, or bought handlebar streamers, or put stickers on. Remember reversing those playing cards (or baseball cards) after they had been used for a while – to make the ‘clacking’ be louder again? And then there were the extra clothes pins needed – in case the one holding your card, or your best friend’s card, broke or got lost.

Today, bicycling is different than it was even just ten years ago, and a whole lot different than it was 25 years ago. Of course, there have been oodles of technical improvements to everything to do with bicycling: clothes, brakes, frames, helmets, tires, and so on. There’s also a lot more traffic on the roads, more bike paths, fewer road sidewalks, more traffic signals, more riders, more laws, and so forth. All in all, while bicycling is still great fun, and a very practical means of transportation, it is certainly a riskier and more involved proposition with more rules to follow.

Don’t assume that your child knows the rules of bicycling. If you want your child to have a great experience too, teach them the rules of fun, safe biking early on. You'll both feel better for it. Here are some basic rules to start with:

1-Teach your child to ride with the traffic, not against it. Surprisingly, this one is hard for a lot of kids because they cannot see the cars. Your child should understand that riding against traffic is against the law, besides being unsafe as drivers no longer anticipate it.

2-Your child should form the habit of coming to a complete stop and looking in both directions before entering a street. This is especially true in the neighborhood, where kids tend to get really ‘sloppy’ about paying attention. In line with this is to teach them to be very watchful whenever they are in a parking lot.

3-Make sure your child learns (and always uses) proper hand signals, and abides by the same traffic laws as motorists. Believe it or not, the younger kids like knowing that they get to use the same rules as licensed drivers – adults.

4-Get a helmet that properly fits your child’s head and riding style - and then make sure he or she wears it. This should be a habit that they get into very quickly. This is also one of those rules that, when disobeyed, should carry some form of punishment. As an aside, a friend of mine recently told me that the way to get your son to wear his helmet, is to allow him to paint it, and apply his video game stickers.

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