Child bike seats and trailers, which is best? A cyclist’s guide to parenting part 2

Summary

The most exciting moment as a parent has to be sharing your passions with your children. Getting a child onto your bike for even just a short slow ride is a standout moment in the relentlessness of wiping bottoms and removing crayon from your freshly painted walls. 

You will reach this monumental milestone somewhere around 9 months to a year old, on a day that it is actually warm and sunny. There is a lot of pressure on the first time going well, one bad experience may take months to forget. So cold and wet should be avoided until cycling is established.  

You have three main child seat options for getting a child on a bike, and they all have advantages and disadvantages: The trailer, the seat behind you and the seat between your legs, we’ll look at these in detail in this post, but first here are the basics. 

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Cycling 90km at only 2 years old

If COVID lockdowns have taught me anything, it’s that you can have an adventure anywhere, even familiar places. Many people chose to run every street in their town, or camped in their garden/different rooms in their house to make the situation seem more adventurous and exciting. Many of us have been pleasantly surprised with what we have discovered. So as my daughter begins to ride her balance bike and we continue to cycle together as a family, we feel that a challenge might be the catalyst to spark a sense of adventure and exploration together.

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A cyclists guide to parenting – Part 1

The short answer is yes, the long answer is that you need to adapt to get the best of both worlds.

Will becoming a parent ( Mum / Dad ) affect my cycling?

How tired do you have to be not to notice the big shiny (literally) 700 lumen light has fallen off your handlebars? Where’s my brand new gilet? I distinctly remember putting it in my pocket this morning. Both of them lost on the 10 mile cycling commute to work that’s been keeping me sane through the first few months of parenting. It’s been an expensive morning replacing them, but lack of sleep can be brutal and right now I’m too tired to care.

When we were thinking about having a child our thought process went something like this: “We’ve got loads of energy, you’ve just run a couple of marathons, and I can cycle hundreds of miles! We’ve got stamina, we’ll find parenting easy! How hard can it be?” 

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