Mom, what's a trike?

 Look at this poor little three-year-old boy.

 

 Clearly he thinks he is hot stuff, riding his brand-new bright red tricycle. 

But he's not. 

He doesn't know it, but he should be riding a "run bike." The three-wheeled design of a trike means that he might not learn to balance as he should. If this boy continues in his foolish ways and persists in riding a trike, as his parents are seemingly forcing him to do, he might later, like his older brother, pictured below, succumb to the fallacy that training wheels are helpful when learning to ride a real two-wheeled bicycle. 

  

And, training wheels? Why, if he relies on training wheels, he might never learn to balance on two wheels.

Does this sound a bit like the story of The Three Sillies? I thought so, too. 

 (Deep sigh of relief from the audience)

From the photo above, it appears that our fears were groundless. 

Older Brother did indeed learn to ride on two wheels. 

Maybe there is hope for Little Brother after all.** 

This was 1990, when bike helmets for everyday riding were still a relatively new idea and when parents and children everywhere believed that the natural progression was: Trike, Bike-with-Training-Wheels, Plain Old Bike. Somehow, it worked, even without the benefits of the latest European technology.

** Since the long-ago days depicted in the above photos, Big Brother and Little Brother have ridden their bikes together on the Icefields Parkway, across southern Alberta and across Vancouver Island. Big Brother has also ridden the 250 km from Montreal to Quebec City in one day. Their early riding lessons on trike and bike-with-training-wheels seem to have been pretty effective.