Riding a tricycle is quintessential with toddlerhood and childhood. The delight of having a vehicle of one’s one brings unparalleled joy to the young child. We know that young children love to move, and this new way of getting from one place to another is sure to bring excitement into their everyday routine.
Apart from the elation and thrill of riding their first vehicle, riding a tricycle offers a host of other benefits. Let’s look at some of them.
Gross motor development
Riding the tricycle is a great way to get in exercise while having a lot of fun. It helps in strengthening upper and lower body muscles. While riding the leg muscles and extended and stretched and ankle muscles are used more than any other kind of activity. Development of hand grip, trunk stability and balance are the other benefits of riding a tricycle. All this gross motor development also helps with other milestones like climbing stairs.
Motor planning, bilateral coordination and balance
When your child is riding a tuk-tuk, they have to figure out how to get from point A to point B and how to navigate their way through obstacles – this is motor planning. Riding also improves their bilateral coordination - the skill of using both sides of the body to do the same thing in a synchronous manner.
Increase confidence and self esteem
Riding a the tuk-tuk involves learning several new skills like figuring out how to sit on sit, how to use their legs to make the tricycle move and how to get from one place to another. All this problem solving which involved trials and failures is sure to increase your child’s self-esteem and confidence when they are successful in riding the tricycle.
Understanding direction and speed
This is your child’s first experience in understanding direction and speed. Steering the tricycle will help your child understand left and right – do use these words around them and guide them to go in various directions. Understanding direction helps build pre-writing and literacy skills. Riding a tuk-tuk also gives your child real-world experiences of speed helping them discover what fast and slow is as well the result of going fast or slow.
Passage to independence
Around the age of 2, children truly begin to understand that they are an individual separate from their parent, and this is their first step in the passage of independence. Introducing the tuk-tuk during this time also helps them to understand physical separation and proximity as they make the choice to ride away from their parents, explore on their own and then come back. This supports them to take further steps into independence at their own pace.
Builds endurance and stamina
When children realize the delight of riding the tuk-tuk and master the art of navigation, they tend to play with it for long periods of time. This in turn helps build their physical endurance and stamina.
Safety
Riding tuk-tuk the tricycle is a great lesson in safety for your children. Through experience, they understand how to stay safe as well as how to keep other people and things in the environment safe. The tuk-tuk gives them complete control and through this they understand how fast they can go without hurting anybody, how they may need to steer away from obstacles as well as when they may need to stop in order to stay safe.
Preparation for riding a bicycle
Learning to ride the tuk-tuk is a wonderful preparation for riding a bicycle. Through this, they isolate and learn the skills of sitting on the seat, holding and steering the handle as well as controlling where they go and how fast they go. This foundational skills that they build helps them make a smooth transition into learning to ride a bicycle whenever they are ready.
