What Safety Gears You Must Need For Your Kids

Updated: October 25, 2021

There’s little doubt about the ability to balance biking being a great way for kids to have fun and stay healthy, so why not do it safely? There is no doubt that all kids love their teeth un-chipped, legs and hands unbroken, skins unscarred, and skulls un-cracked.

With lots of kids opting to ride balance bikes for fun, safety awareness is increasingly turning out to be an important issue. While the benefits of balance biking far outweighing the risks, it is imperative that kids are tipped on how to stay safe on the road and in the neighborhoods.

With the correct knowledge about biking safety and the proper safety gear to match, there’s no reason why children cannot go out and enjoy the freedom of balance biking.

Before hopping onto their balance bikes, there are a couple of things that kids should know about safety gear and how it helps keep them safe.

Kids Bike Helmet

A helmet that is of the right size for you the kid and that fits correctly is very important! Kids should always wear one as this reduces the risk of suffering head injuries should they be involved in an accident.

On average more than half of the injuries suffered by balance biking kids are to the face and the head.

Parents should ensure their children always wear correctly fitted helmets to protect themselves against head injuries in case they happen to fall. The helmet should be worn correctly, meaning it should be:

• positioned squarely on a kid’s head, sitting just above the eyebrows, and should not be tilted back or tipped towards the front.
• a proper snug fit
• positioned in such a way that it stops them from seeing clearly or covers their ears
• having its straps fastened in a secure manner and not twisted, with there being enough room for two fingers to be placed in between their chin and the strap

Many bike helmets these days are lightweight and come in colors which kids will consider cool. If the kids don’t love theirs as it is, parents could help them personalize them with some of their favorite stickers.

Reflective stickers make for a great choice as they look cool and make the kids more visible to people driving cars. All in all, wearing a helmet is a question of individual choice and parents should make that choice for their kids.

Cheek top 5 Helmets for Kids Safety

Elbow and knee pads go a long way in providing impact protection for high-speed collisions. Additionally, they can save biking kids from broken knees or twisted elbows. Any biking kid who has fallen on their knees while wearing elbow and knee pads can attest to this.

In most children’s heads, this sort of gear is totally unnecessary as it does not make them appear cool, but for any child who takes interest in balance biking, their parents or guardian needs an established source to consult for safety advice. And this source will tell them one thing: Elbow and knee pads are a must.

While it would be preferable to use full-body armor, kids that are a beginner or recreational balance bikers could start by having elbow and knee pads first.  The body armor that is on the market right now is mostly designed to spread the effect of hitting sharp objects.

There exists nothing anywhere in the world that we know of that would really protect kids against broken collarbones, and it is for this reason that kids should remain extra careful even when wearing elbow and knee pads. Any parent or guardian looking to prevent an active kid from harming himself can do more with education than outfitting the kid with any sort of body armor!

Cheek top 5 Elbow and Knee Pads

Reflective Vest for Kids

Other road users in the biking vicinity must be able to see balance biking kids. There exist quite a number of items of clothing and equipment your kids can use to help them keep safe after dark. Reflective vest is some. Kids should wear reflective clothing because fluorescent or light-colored clothes will not be visible to other road users. Parents should get their kids to wear fluorescent or light-colored clothes if they are riding during the day or in poorly lit areas.

Kids should always use lights when balance biking after dark, in the rain, or when the weather is overcast. Parents should use a lot of reflective tape on their kids’ bicycles and helmets. But kids should also recognize its limits such as there being nothing to reflect back to cars until the cars’ headlights shine on the tape.

This possibility will put biking kids at risk as at that point it may be too late for either one of the drivers or biking kid to react. There exists no scientific evidence that reflective material actually helps to either identify the bicycle and pinpoint its location for the motor vehicle driver or grab his attention any sooner.

Still, the neighborhoods and roads would not be better off without reflective vests, since they do not rely on maintenance or reliability of the biking kid’s lights. The drivers on the roads would be able to see the biking kids at night because of the CPSC-mandated reflectors on their vests even if they do not have lights.

Cheek top 5 Reflective Vest for kids

Pad Set with Knee Elbow and Gloves for Kids

It is a known fact that the most-used bicycle safety equipment aside from helmets is the glove and it is with good reason. Gloves will protect the biking kid’s skin on the palms of your hands when he or she falls on pavement or any other hard/rough surface.

Some of the gloves are padded to protect the kid’s hands from compression stress from the bars on the rides. The gloves will also keep the kid’s hands warm during the winter season. When a kid bikes through a patch of grass that may cause them a puncture, the gloves will allow them to stop and wipe the glass bits from their tires before the glass fully penetrates it.

(Parents should advise the kids not to attempt to do this while the tire is still moving!) The importance of gloves to a biking kid could never be understated and they are highly recommended.

Parents could buy the washable ones for summer use while for winter they will find that the ones with non-breathable membranes will get wet on every single ride and have to be dried out thoroughly before another use or they become rancid inside. Down mittens are the best and warmest things parents could find their biking kids for winter although they also get wet.

Cheek top 5 Pad Set with Knee Elbow and Gloves

Final Verdict

The most important safety equipment any biking kid could have is a brain. Kids can avoid more injuries by balance biking safely than the equipment can possibly ever protect them against.

Parents should challenge their kids to give it some thought and make conscious choices on the level of safety they want to pursue in their everyday balance biking.

Making the kids think about it in advance can give them behavioral guidelines for those occasions when some crazy emotions or peer pressure makes them want to throw caution to the winds!