The Health Benefits of Electric Balance Bikes for Toddlers

Whether it's swimming or cycling, the sooner our kids learn the ropes of a new sport, the better. It keeps them physically healthy and offers them the chance to improve and develop their motor skills.

Confidence is everything and, when it comes to bikes, that starts with getting them used to how to balance properly. Read on for the benefits of a balance bike that are going to set your young child or toddler on the road to biking success.

What Is a Balance Bike?

Balance bikes are pedal-less bicycles or electric bikes designed for younger children. As a rule of thumb, once kids start walking and have begun developing their motor skills, they'll be able to begin their journey on a balance bike. This is typically from around 18 months of age.

Balance bikes are not the same as tricycles. They only have 2 wheels and are proper bicycles rather than toys. The clue is in the name: they're bikes that'll help your young child develop their balance skills.

How Toddlers Benefit From Balance Bikes

Balance bikes offer the chance for hours of fun and healthy exercise. Here's a closer look at some of their key advantages:

Gross Motor Skill Development

As well as being lots of fun, a balance bike will assist in the development of motor skills. A motor skill involves particular movements of the body's muscles to carry out certain tasks.

Gross motor skills relate to larger muscle groups. They include the coordination and movement of arms, legs and other large body parts. Developing gross motor skills takes time and skill.

You'll already have seen your toddler roll over, crawl, stand and walk, for example. As they grow older, you can start helping them to develop eye-hand coordination and balance.

Building Muscle Strength

Balance bikes are an excellent tool for helping toddlers develop their gross motor skills. Learning balance and coordination can prevent injury. It encourages self-regulation and provides the basis for the further development of fine motor skills. Balance bikes also help with the development of endurance and core muscle strength.

The design of a balance bike spurs toddlers on to use their arms and lift their legs when riding forward. This all helps them to build up their muscles and strengthen their joints.

Balance bikes get kids used to stopping with their feet, steering and turning around, giving them better control along with the confidence to carry on riding.

Moving on to a Pedal Bike

If you put your child straight onto a pedal bike, it can be recipe for disaster. Not only is there a greater risk of falling off it can, as a result, damage confidence and put them off riding a bicycle at all.

Beginning with a balance bike tends to make the transition to a pedal bike far easier. Toddlers who set out on a balance bike can often start riding a pedal bike without stabilisers by 3 years old.

Balance bikes get young children familiar with the concepts of balance and motion as a safer building block for learning to ride a pedal bike.

Taking Plenty of Exercise

Kids need to burn off energy and using a balance bike makes this fun. It adds variety to other simple pleasures like running around and playing games outdoors.

If you can fit a balance bike into your child's routine, they'll quickly wear themselves out and that tends to lead to plenty of sound and solid sleep.

Activities need to be fun when you're a toddler. A balance bike means many happy fun-filled hours spent getting to grips with new and exciting skills.

Building Self-Confidence

To some extent, children tend to learn by trial and error. Balance bikes for kids help them do this in a safe and measured way that mitigates the risk of accidents. There are still plenty of tricks to learn when you have no pedals on your bikes.

These include coasting without stopping, jumping or riding off a ledge. When you've only just learned to walk, imagine the sensation of free-wheeling for the first time on a balance bike.

Getting Outdoors

A key benefit of a bike is that it gets the kids outdoors. That means giving your vitamin D levels a boost and getting plenty of fresh air.

Getting closer to nature is good for our health and well-being, toddlers included. The sooner we can get them playing outdoors the better.

Balance bikes for kids give you the chance to introduce your young child to riding in new environments. These include your favorite walking trails that you can share with them or simply on the grass in the park.

Balance Bikes Are Great Value

It can be tempting to splash out on the very latest gadget or toy for our kids. Even the wisest of parents can get sucked in by marketing hype and the desire to keep up with what other parents buy their toddlers.

A quality balance bike will get used again and again over a period of several years. It should keep its value allowing you to hand it down to a younger sibling or even resell it online.

Even when your child takes the plunge by riding a pedal bike, you'll find they'll still enjoy a balance bike for riding for doing all the tricks they've learned. Balance bikes are therefore both cost-effective and environmentally friendly.

Being Part of the Family

Balance bikes let your toddlers participate in activities with the rest of the family as opposed to simply observing. An electric balance bike is going to let them keep up with the rest of the family on bike rides and trips out to the bike tracks.

The compact design of balance bikes makes them simple to transport. They’re sufficiently small enough to put on the backseat of the car and light enough to pick up and carry home should your child get tired of riding.

Takani Electric Balance Bikes

Don’t let your child get left behind. At Takani, we're passionate about getting kids used to riding bikes as soon as possible. Enjoy the benefits of an electric balance bike and invest in your child's healthy development.

Make a start by checking out Takani's range of electric balance bikes for kids.