Start by removing the pedals. Learning to ride a bike involves a chicken-and-egg problem: you need to learn to pedal in order to learn balance, but before you learn to balance you can’t practice pedaling. You can break these out by taking off the pedals so that he can straddle the bike easier and learn to balance by “scooting.” (These videos are in hd, to see the hd quality, click on the HD icon. For some reason I can’t get wordpress to embed the hd version directly.)
Once he has balance, learning to pedal is easy. Here is his first try (and second try) on the very next day.
Here is a previous installment. Next week, how to teach a 3 year old to swim.
Cheap Talk 
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September 8, 2009 at 9:47 am
Lones Smith
Quite impressive. A girl (or tom boy) taught me to bike at age 6.9 — before that I had ridden the world’s largest trike, and have a 2″ scar on my right hand from a trike wipe-out. 🙂 I decided then to teach my eldest to ride a bike at age 4. But age 3… now THAT is impressive. I see a Tour de France in his future.
September 8, 2009 at 9:53 am
jeff
the optimal age for learning is 3 because at that age they fit on the smallest bike which 1) has a low center of gravity for ease of balance and 2) is a short fall to the earth.
September 9, 2009 at 9:35 am
sandeep
We were thinking of getting the Skoot (check it out on Amazon) for our four year old buy maybe I will do what Jeff tried as it replicated Skoot with a real bike and hence has a longer life span.
September 16, 2009 at 6:54 pm
rob
We just taught our daughter to ride a 16″ bike (no training wheels) and she is 3 years and 3 months. She got a balance bike for her 3rd birthday, but mastered it so quickly that she was begging to try one with pedals. So we took her to pick one out, and lo and behold, she was riding on the first day (after a push start), and getting the bike going by herself riding forever by day 3. Definitely recommend the balance method. I’m sure she could have ridden at 2 years old if we had started her then (albeit on a smaller bike). Now just-turned-2 year old little brother is balancing on balance bike inherited from sister. We went with the pv glider because it was metal, superlight, and had a hand brake. 3 year old picked up hand brake right away and now uses it on real bike. Highly recommend. I think many, if not most, kids can learn this early if its something they are motivated to do. Happy biking!
September 16, 2009 at 8:48 pm
jeff
nice.
September 17, 2009 at 3:52 pm
BeautifulKhen
Wow…your son is doing a wonderful job!! My daughter is 3 and I am thinking about teaching her soon.
September 20, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Anonymous
My son is 3 and a half and is riding a bike no training wheels. He started with training wheels at 2 and we just took them off. He rides really well, going over a ramp and doing other tricks.