Teaching your kids to ride mini ATVs is more involved than just showing them the brakes and the accelerator. Mini ATVs are great fun, but they are more than toys and shouldn’t be treated like a toy. Teach your kids to properly ride and handle mini ATVs safely before you set them out on the trails. Here are a few tips to go by before letting the kids ride on their own.

Practice makes perfect

Take the mini ATV out to an abandoned parking lot or a flat surfaced field and let the kids get a feel for it. This is where you teach them the proper techniques to handle the bike as well as the safety precautions they need to make a habit. Let them know that until they show that they are riding safely each and every time, they won’t get their mini ATVs onto a trail where they will have the most fun with them.

Hand signals

Getting around on mini ATVs on a trail or in a field goes a lot swifter if everybody knows where everybody is and where they are going. Teach your kids to use proper hand signals when turning or stopping so that others around won’t end up on top of them.

Riding techniques

Teaching good riding techniques is important during the practice phase of learning to ride mini ATVs. Teach them how to look ahead when they are riding and see what kinds of obstacles are coming up. Teach them to lean into turns and tell them that, while good posture is important everywhere else, they can’t sit straight when turning a mini ATV, it will cause them to lose control of the vehicle. Little hints like this go a long way because some of the techniques to riding mini ATVs aren’t necessarily things that come naturally. Let the kids know it’s not like riding their bicycles and that they can end up in the hospital if they don’t do it right.

Proper training for kids before setting them out on their mini ATVs will keep them safe and make riding the trails much more fun for them.