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Buying a Baby Bike Seat - A How To Guide For Parents

We purchased over a period of a couple months, trialled and discarded 2 common ways of riding with our 12 month old baby before settling on a solution - I intend this story will guide you to avoid making the same mistakes we made.

Getting back onto a bike for both Dads & Mums after the arrival of a new child is a fantastic low-impact way to allow your spouse a little "me time" whilst spending some quality time with your new child and it is a fantastic low-impact way to travel further than you could on foot alone, get fit and enjoy the fresh air

There are really only 2 choices for pedaling with baby - either a trailer or toddler bicycle seat. After using a trailer a couple of times we found it's size and clumsiness restricted our biking to the widest of bike tracks, the distance of our child from us made us nervous and also restricted interaction. We weren't happy with our child sitting at "exhaust height" - we quickly settled on a child bicycle seat - or a bicycle mounted child carrier - to give it it's serious name.

You can purchase 3 types of seat; The very common rear-attached seat, a front-attached seat, more common in Europe, and, the newest, a center-attached seat.

* Rear-Fixed - Various similar options - Topeak, Humax, etc etc. very common, mass produced in China. These seats really belong in the 20th century and it surprises me that parents still purchase them, other than they tend to be cheaper.

Carrying additional items in a rucksack etc is next to impossible, balance is out, interaction with your child doesn't exist. Fitting a rear-attached seat to a bicycle with disc-brakes can be impossible at worst and time-consuming and expensive at best and fitting a rear-attached seat to a bicycle with dual-suspension is usually impossible.

The only upside, other than price, that a rear-attached seat may have is that it can transport a larger child, often up to 22Kilos or more. You have to ask why they're not riding their own bicycle by this time, since this is the approximate weight of a 6 year old!

* Front-Mounted - Such makers as iBert, BoBike and others, these usually attach by a single point to front of the bicycle. Front-attached bicycle seats puts your child in front of you, encouraging interaction, engaing your child in the ride, reducing distractions to the rider, however with all the weight attached at the front-wheel also makes steering trickier and generally restricts max. weight carryable to 15 kilos (~3 years old).

* Center-Mounted - Only one options known to exist - WeeRide. This attaches in 2 places - at the handlebars and also at the seat post, improving on the pure front-attached solution by spreading the weight more evenly, whilst still having all the advantages of a front attached seat. This type of seat will also attach to a dual-suspension or disc-brake bicycle.

So after trying a trailer and discarding it and we purchased a traditional rear-mounted child bike seat for our 12 month old child recently. We pedaled with it once on our bikes, my partner said she'd never pedal with our daughter again in a rear mounted seat. Our daughters nose was running, she'd unzipped her jacket and kicked off her shoes - and all this out-of-sight behind us.

There are the obvious practicalities of ease of use and balance on top of these "care" problems. With a child behind you, your balance is off, out-of-sight you're unable to react to any sudden movement. Your child will be more restless unable to see where they are going, throwing their weight about to see around you. It's probably more dangerous - since you're concentrating on whats going on behind you - rather than watching where you're going.....

Lastly - ever thought about getting off a bike with a rear-mounted seat - chances are you'll kick your child in the face as you try to lift your leg over . And worst of all - in an accident - you can't protect them, can't put your arms around them!

So we returned it and purchased a center mounted WeeRide child bicycle seat - all of these issues are fixed. Our toddler can see where she’s going, we can keep an eye on her, our balance is better, we can get off simply and best of all - there's the added advantages... we'll sing songs, count doggies, guess colours, play I-Spy, we're interacting, all things we couldn't do in a rear-mounted seat.

So please before you purchase a rear-attached seat - think long and hard about whether all you want to do is transport your child from A-B with all the problems above - or do you want to enjoy riding with your child and interact, participate.