Recreational & Family - 8 Year Old Son Has Problems with Shifting Gears on Every Bike- Throws Tantrums,etc

I really don't know what to do with my son. He insists on having a bike with gears. He is now on his second 20" wheel kid's "mountain bike." The previous one is about a year and a half old and in pieces in the garage.

At one time in my life I was pretty good at working on bikes. I built my own bike when I was a teenager, but I had help from an adult and don't really remember all that much. I haven't even been on a bicycle in 12+ years.

For his 7th birthday he got a six speed mountain bike. It was not a high quality "bike shop" type bike but it seemed alright. We really are not in the income bracket to spend more than I paid for some of my cars for a kid's bike that will be outgrown in a year or 2, but we do try to get the best quality we can and take care of things.

He always had a problem with this bike shifting gears, with the chain slipping,etc. After awhile, the shifter ( grip shift) stopped working. I figured this was a combination of cheap components, possibly abuse ( leaving in the rain, riding to friend's houses and throwing the bike around, everyone in the neighborhood sharing bikes,etc).

Perhaps my son just doesn't know how to ride a bike with gears?

I bought him a new bike yesterday. We tried out several ( at least all the ones we could find in his size at multiple stores), and I let him pick out the one he wanted. It was tuned up and inspected before we took it home. he rode it around the store and said he loved it.

We get home and within a couple hours he's throwing a tantrum and saying the gears don't work, the chain slips,etc.

I got on the bike and rode it myself. I just rode down the block, but there were no problems at all. I shifted through all the gears fine. Brakes worked fine. Everything was smooth.

I don't know what the deal is. Is it possible that a kid does not know how to shift gears or somehow does it "wrong"?

It's fairly common that kids under 10 don't intuitively grasp how to use their gears. Without actually seeing him in action, it sounds as tho' he's probably been over shifting slightly, even if the gears are indexed. Have you checked to see if he's stopping pedalling while he's trying to change gears? That can cause problems, especially if he backpedals a little while doing so.

We have a session where we get kids to change up through the range one gear at a time, on command and then back down, ditto. This helps us to spot any misunderstanding about exactly how to change.

Once he's got that sussed, get him to try out different gears for different conditions. When we're teaching them how to ride slaloms (using flat cones) and other skills manoeuvres, we get them to do it in high, medium and low gears so that they can develop a feel for what makes it easier or harder to do them. Ditto with slopes/hills of off-road conditions.

Since he may already have a bee in his bonnet about gears, take it very steadily. I had one difficult case where we solved the problem by using the adjustment screws to lock out all his gears except the middle two until he could chose the better of those two gears, for whatever he was doing, and gradually unlocked one addtional gear at a time. He was a kid who hated getting anything wrong, so we reduced the opportunity for him to do so by reducing the range of errors he could make.

I apologise if I'm teaching granny to suck eggs, but try and be as laid-back as possible about it and keep each session short and simple with only one aim at a time - baby steps.

Good luck and let us know how he gets on.

Thanks for the advice. I found out that there WAS something wrong with the bike. I took it for a ride again. Everything seemed fine for awhile, but then it did it to me also. I took it to the store and got it adjusted.

I feel really bad now thinking that the bike was fine and he was doing something to cause it, but at least we were able to figure it out. He seems happy with everything now. I do think he tends to want to shift for the sake of shifting. So I thought maybe there was something he was overdoing or shifting improperly. He also really takes things hard on himself. I think we are both happy now to find it was the bike's "fault" and it was easily corrected.

He's doing something wrong. I suggest riding with him on your bike and watching him to see what it is.

Make sure he knows he needs to be pedaling while shifting. Since you've ridden it and confirmed it works yourself, the only other thing it can be is that your son is a brat. It is time for some hard love. Tell him: "You have to be pedaling when you shift gears. I know it works because I just checked it. This is the last bike you're getting for a while, so you'd better take care of it and stop throwing tantrums."

Good luck.

Definitely check that he's pedaling while shifting. I can remind my 8-yr old to do the same and he'll still coast when he's twisting the grip shift. Sometimes that results in him clicking it over multiple gears which creates a mess when he resumes pedaling. Pretty common at that age.

It's fairly common that kids under 10 don't intuitively grasp how to use their gears. ...


that's true--good suggestions here and in the other posts. But what strikes me is that you're apparently tolerating a tantrum from an 8-year old. He's about five years too old for that crap. What happens when he's 15?

Kids often drop their bikes to the ground on the derailer side, bending the hanger and sending it out of adjustment. This may be part of the problem, in which case you need to teach him to park it upright or put it down "expensive side up."

Abuse can also increase friction in the shifting components and make it skip gears even after attempting to adjust it.

8 is pretty young for a kid to really understand gearing. My son is 7 and we're still working on really basic stuff. But if you put the bike up on a stand and teach him to watch the gears as he turns the pedals by hand and shifts it, he may gain an appreciation for the care that needs to be taken.

@ that age my daughter rocked out the SS. We worked on control and pedaling first, then she got gears when she grew out of that bike at about 11.
Ride with him and see how he's shifting, sounds like operator error seeing that it's brand new and you rode after he did and it seemed fine.

my 31 yr old wife didn't know how to use gears effectively until I told her how this weekend.....and she only has a 3spd.

My 8-next-week daughter isn't ready for gears yet, I still see her putting her feet down to stop so I wouldn't even try gears. I got her a used BMX bike and threw some yellow tires on it and she loves it. In three years or so when she needs a new one, then we'll talk gears.

(And her mother knew how to use the gears, but until she started bike commuting last year, she never did).

It takes time. My 8yo got his first shifter bike last year. First trip was a straight and somewhat flat bike path for about 5 miles. Second trip was closer to 20 miles with lots of hills and on dirt. It takes all that and then some riding right behind him telling him exactly what to do and when to do it. Yes there were some tears but we're both getting through the learning curve.

IMO, grip shift can be too stiff for little hands. My 6-y/o can't shift his, but he can shift the Shimano twist shifter on his Burley without problems.

http://www.amazon.com/STX-right-rear-shifter-Pod/dp/B001GSOE70/ref=sr_1_106?ie=UTF8&m=A2TE9IQP68MWQU&s=cycling&qid=1272989406&sr=1-106

or

http://www.amazon.com/SRAM-Mountain-Trigger-Shifter-7-Speed/dp/B000VT2GHA/ref=sr_1_102?ie=UTF8&m=A2TE9IQP68MWQU&s=cycling&qid=1272989406&sr=1-102

might work a lot better...

IMO, grip shift can be too stiff for little hands. My 6-y/o can't shift his, but he can shift the Shimano twist shifter on his Burley without problems.

What's the difference between grip and twist shift? My 8 yr old (almost 9) can operate the twist shifter just fine on his 20" bike but can't do the trigger shifter on his 24" bike except for perfect conditions (basically the 6 weeks ending labor day weekend, around here).

The shifter issue is the last barrier in his transition from the 20" to the 24" bike. He continues to switch between them for now, though (delaying when I can paint the 20" one pink for his sister).

Hmm, the Burley has a Shimano shifter that is kind of a Grip Shift knockoff design. It's like this:


http://www.amazon.com/Shimano-SL-RS41Revo-Shift-Lever-shifter/dp/B000A6DH68


I think it actually works quite a bit better (easier) than the true SRAM product.

I haven't tried my son with trigger shifters; maybe they wouldn't work well either.

They should bring back the internal hub 3 speed for the younger age group.

using a gripshift might be part of the problem. holding on o it tightly while riding over bumps & stuff might cause the shifter to shift between 2 gears. Switching to a push/push or push/pull indexed shifter might solve the problem....