Amy Sturkey LPT is an experienced and highly trained physical therapist at Child and Family Development in Charlotte. 

During Amy’s 20+ year physical therapy career, she has helped kids, teens and young adults reach their potential with everything from learning to crawl, stand, walk, run, ride a bike, and much more.

This summer, her goal is to help young people get rolling! 

She shares, “I think people start too hard when they try to teach their child to ride a bike.  I often address the necessary skills separately before working on all the skills together.”

• A child needs to be able to steer pushing a shopping cart and a low riding toy when they are being pushed before he or she should be expected to steer and pedal a bike.  
• Balance is important too. Typically a 5 year old can learn to ride a bike.  A 5-year-old can balance on either foot for 10 seconds with hands on hips.  Keep the training wheels if your child can‚Äôt balance 10 seconds well on each foot.   
• Many children have trouble monitoring their environment.  I work a lot on the child practicing negotiating moving obstacle courses on their own 2 feet before expecting a child to do that on a bike. 
• Pedaling is an alternating reciprocal coordination activity.  If  child can‚Äôt run, they are going to have a hard time riding a bike.  They need to have the coordination to  be able to do simple coordination jumps on the land before the child could be coordinated enough to pedal, steer, break and monitor his environment.

Read more about her Learning To Ride A Bike program here.