When your baby starts graduating from babyhood, you’ll be inclined to buy them toys to help their development. One of the most typical toys for young kids (or older babies) is a baby trike. Before getting a trike for your growing baby, you should know if baby trikes are worth it.
A baby tricycle can help improve your baby’s balance, coordination, and confidence with other activities while keeping them physically fit. Before your baby becomes old enough to use a bicycle, you can never go wrong by getting them a trike.
Baby tricycles make excellent gifts for older babies. However, a lot of thought should go into the final decision of purchasing a baby trike to get the best value for your money without compromising on your baby’s safety. Here’s everything you need to know about baby trikes to help in your purchase decision.
What Is a Baby Trike?
The word “trike” is short for a tricycle, and a baby trike is a kind of three-wheeled bike designed for young kids and older babies. The three-wheeled design aids its stability, helping to hold the bike upright while the baby struggles to learn how to pedal the trike correctly.
While most mums gravitate towards strollers for older babies, baby tricycles are more advantageous. A tricycle will help develop your baby’s motor skills while tiring them out and teaching them to be independent, all at once.
When Can a Baby Learn to Use a Trike?
New mums always regard their babies as too young for a baby trike until they become too old. Since there never seems to be the perfect time when you should get one for your child, you may want to ask: when can babies learn to use baby trikes?
Some baby trikes are made for kids that haven’t even learned to walk properly. Some baby trikes are marketed towards kids learning how to walk. While this doesn’t seem very intuitive, it can be very advantageous to the baby.
If you want your baby to take full advantage of a baby trike, you should get it for them between the ages of one to three. If your baby is one year old or younger, you must buy special trikes with extras that let you assist them while riding.
Throughout this post, you’ll learn why trikes make better mobility items for your baby than a stroller and all of the benefits associated with their use.
Benefits of Using a Baby Trike
Sometimes, it can be hard to justify buying a trike for a baby that can’t even walk. Saying it’s advantageous isn’t saying a lot, especially if there’s no proof of the advantages. Here, I’ll show you some of the benefits of using a trike for a baby.
You should note, however, that you should only buy a bike for a toddler if you can help them ride it safely. Safe riding practices start from buying a bike with a parental handle to ensure you’re always there to help them ride safely.
You’ll learn more about helping your babies ride their trikes safely later in the article, but here are some of the benefits of buying a trike for your baby.
- Trikes improve balance and coordination
You can’t buy a bicycle for a toddler. They’d simply fall off before even having the chance to ride it at all. The next best balance training for your baby is a trike, and the risk of falling and sustaining injuries isn’t nearly as much as that of a regular bike.
In addition to helping your baby maintain their balance, baby tricycles also teach some of the most complicated coordination skills to your baby. While regular toys and baby gyms mostly help in hand-eye coordination, baby trikes do a lot more than that.
To ride a trike effectively, a kid needs coordination among the hands, eyes, and feet. Continuous attempts to ride a trike leads to improved coordination between the eyes and multiple bodily muscles.
- It keeps your baby physically fit
While you can simply buy a stroller and never have to deal with having to teach your baby how to ride anything, that will be a terrible choice for their wellbeing. Unless you have an alternative way to keep, them fit, buying them a trike is a natural way to do so.
Even if your baby engages in lots of exercises, you should also know that exercising is never excessive. Letting them have a baby trike only makes their day better, not any worse.
The baby tricycle requires them to be physically active to propel the machine. The unique system doesn’t only make your child physically fit, but it also improves the coordination between different muscles across their body.
- Develops their confidence
Using baby trikes can help your baby discover how mobile they are. When they start learning to steer the trike and interact with natural objects around them, they’ll start gaining more confidence with other activities in which they engage.
Some examples of how this can be beneficial in helping your baby walk much quicker. Using the experience gained from riding their trike, they’ll be more willing to try out similar activities, including playing, walking, running, and playing with toys.
Introducing your baby to trikes at babyhood will help them in other activities that require dexterity. In short, they’ll become better cyclists and athletes, which is usually the joy of every parent.
- Serves as a prep for a bike
The basics of learning to ride a bike are largely similar to that of a tricycle, making baby trikes an excellent tool to teach your kid to ride a bike since it’s impossible to safely get a toddler to ride a bike.
Once it feels like your baby has achieved a satisfactory level of mastery with the trike, you can introduce them to a bike. The balance, dexterity, confidence, fitness, and coordination amassed from riding trikes all carry on to their biking experience, basically making it a piece of cake.
However, it’s important to know that there is a learning curve to riding a bike, even if your kid has some experience with a baby trike. You must try to assist them in the transition to a bike to avoid any unwarranted difficulties or injuries.
- It makes safety lessons easier
Sooner or later, your baby will grow to ride bikes, motorbikes, and eventually, cars, and they must have exercised some safety precautions to even make it that far. Introducing your baby to a trike will help them learn necessary safety precautions even before learning how to move.
While teaching your baby how to ride a trike, you must also instruct them to always put on the safety helmet. They should also learn to slow down to avoid damaging other items around and how to take turns to avoid obstacles.
Babies with this basic knowledge of safety regulations won’t find it very difficult keeping themselves safe on the road when they eventually need to be there, thanks to your $100 investment.
How to Choose a Baby Trike for Your Baby
Before paying a dime to purchase a baby trike, you should know the many factors to consider to confirm you’re making the right investment. These factors help you choose a trike that’s safe, convenient, and appropriate for your use case.
Here are some of the most important factors that should consider when choosing the best tri-wheeled mobility machine for your baby.
- Budget
Your budget severely limits the quality you get when shopping for a baby trike. Some trikes offer a plethora of both needed and unneeded features, with each feature adding to the already-expensive retail price.
While some trikes cost extraordinarily expensive, some are quite cheap. If you’re tightly constrained by a budget, you can find a budget trike that goes for as low as $35, depending on how well you can scour Amazon.
If you don’t have an attractive budget, you should probably stop here and buy the prettiest thing you can afford. Otherwise, you can customize your idea baby tricycle even further.
- Portability
If you have a relatively older kid, you should prioritize getting a portable tricycle. You should also consider the same if you’re almost always on the move.
Your baby can only make the most of their trike when they can access it constantly. If the tricycle is relatively easy to take apart, you can easily take it with you on most trips, as well-packaged plastic parts don’t look nearly as awkward as carrying a full tricycle in your car.
- The baby’s age and height
A baby won’t get most of the benefits of riding a baby trike if its legs can’t reach the pedals. Before buying a trike for your baby, you should check to confirm that the height is optimum for your baby, and you aren’t simply buying a dud that nobody will use.
Typically, you should be able to get an aptly-sized baby trike by providing your baby’s age. If you have a precocious baby, however, you may have to buy one that is a few months ahead of their age.
