D learnt to pedal his bike when he was 4.5, and H just learnt and is 3.5. Here are my tips.

Broadly speaking the stages are: inspire a kid to pay attention to their bike, have them walk (feet on ground) around on it, have them run around on it, have them glide on it, have them pedal on it.

The simplest part of this is simply: you remain on whatever stage you're on until they're actively doing the next step themselves, no pressure required.

To set expectations, I'd estimate about a 3-6 months between stages, if not longer. For reference, H started walking with his bike around 2 years old, and 1.5 years later could pedal — and I'd say that H was very very inspired and motivated.

Stage 0: Inspiration

First you want your kid to become inspired to use their bike. I think this is surprisingly difficult sometimes. Some kids see a bike and are instantly into it, but generally I think it's much easier if you can inspire your kid to pay attention to their bike — often kids will treat it like any other toy and play with it a bit but it won't resonate. Here are some ideas:

• Ride your own bike around them

• Take them to play dates or whatever else with older kids who ride their bikes

• Lots of excitement around the bike

• Older siblings who can ride are the best solution.

Stage 1: Walking

You simply leave the bike out (with a helmet!) and encourage them to sit on it, flat footed, and slowly walk around. For the first few weeks or months, it'll be incredibly slow, but eventually your kid will be comfortable simply walking around sitting with their butt on the seat of the bike.

Stage 2: Running

Eventually they'll be comfortable enough on the bike that they'll be comfortable gathering a bit more speed. I'd encourage speed pretty explicitly "lets go faster!", "chase me!", "run!" since there is really no risk of going too fast.

Ideally running looks like them moving quicker with their butt on the seat and then very slowly you'll see slight pauses where their feet are off the ground.

Like Stage 1, this stage takes forever — months not weeks.

Stage 3: Gliding

They'll run faster and faster on the bike and eventually they'll start gliding — this is where both of their feet are off the ground.

Kids spend a long time in this stage because it can actually be quite difficult to find a pedal bike small enough for some kids, and also just learning to pedal is cognitively a lot more complex than gliding.

Basically to encourage this stage all you need to do is keep encouraging more and more and more and more speed. There's no instructions needed, kids will pick gliding up automagically once they're moving faster and find their balance.

Once they start gliding (both feed off the ground, probably sticking out sideways) you can assign a label "good job gliding!" so that they know what it is. Eventually you can encourage them to glide by basically telling them to glide whenever on a slope.

Stage 3.5: Braking

At this point I strongly recommend you introduce the concept of braking to kids — braking with their feet is quite dangerous once they're gliding since their body will stop moving but their bike won't, and they'll be holding onto the handlebars still.

Disconnect the front brake and show them how the brake works. And then just keep repeating "use your brake!" I have found that kids get very into braking once they learn they can skid in dirt.

Stage 4: Pedaling

At some point your kid will be capable of gliding and braking. You want them to be really really good at those two things. A good benchmark is probably can they glide and brake on a gentle hill thats 20 meters or so.

At this point you put the pedals on the bike and just ignore them for a few weeks, and then encourage "one footed gliding" where one foot is on the pedal and the other is pushing them along. Once they can do this they'll get pedaling very quickly.

You simply say "Glide with one foot and then pedal" and then let them learn that they need some speed to start pedaling. For the first few weeks they'll try to pedal without moving, but many of these things are hard to explain — kids just need to figure it out.

I recommend the one footed gliding into pedaling because this way one foot is already on the pedals: this greatly reduces the amount of time that they're looking down trying to get their feet on the pedals, which, when gliding can actually be quite hazardous as they'll be moving 5-10 feet without looking where they're going.

Gear recommendations

• Bikes with hand brakes cannot come soon enough
• Coaster brakes are a bad idea since they prevent one footed gliding
• Many 16" bikes require pedaling super fast to maintain speed, I recommend the Woom 3 Automagic for this reason — we switched from a Woom 3 to a Woom 3 Automagic for this reason, so I have good experience with the benefit here
• Helmets whenever on a bike, even just sitting, makes helmets not an issue
• Lots of praise
• Lots of inspiration!