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1. How do men and boy over bar mitzvah wear a helmet if they have to take along a hat and jacket? My 13-year-old won’t ride his bike anymore because his mean mommy insists that he wear a helmet, and he claims that he can’t because he has to wear his hat and jacket. (I’m talking about when he goes to shul and really does need them.) How do you manage both? My husband has a basket on the back of his bike where he tosses his hat when he rides, but my son’s bike doesn’t have a place to attach anything.
2. Do you make your kids wear helmets if they only ride with training wheels? My older kids all have helmets, but my younger kids still use training wheels and they don’t because I don’t worry much about them falling. Yesterday one of them actually did take a minor fall, so I wondered if perhaps even the younger ones should have helmets. Thoughts?
Get him a basket for his bike or a bike with a basket.
What does your 14.5 year old do?
He could always walk to shul. He can wear his hat and still get excercise.
A basket for the bicycle is the appropriate solution.
Edited
You should definitely make your younger children wear helmets.
1) As you already pointed out, accidents can happen, even with training wheels.
2) Get them used to the idea that riding a bike requires a helmet and they will be less likely to balk than they would if you spring that rule on them after they have already been riding for awhile.
WOW that was fast.
Just ==>last month<== he was only 14.5.
Why cant he leave his hat in shul?
The law is in NY everyone 14 and under must wear a helmet, but even older its safety, You will see most adults wear helmets now.
If the kids see the parents do it they will do it too, I took my daughter to a very loud place and made her put ear plugs in her ear and she wanted to take them out, But she saw I put them in as well and she did not take them out as long as I had them in.
He only owns one hat?
Sorry for talking to you the way I would talk to my own 15 year old 🙂
1. put his hat in a shopping bag and hang it on the handles, and he can wear his jacket or fold it and put it in the bag also.
2. my 2 year old rides a tricycle, and although it was hard to find one that fit, even SHE wears a helmet. my 4 year old still has the training wheels on, and he wont go on without a helmet (on his own he will say something, but i guess it is because he knows i wont let, so it is ingrained in him)
ok, here’s a new question- how do you get your HUSBAND to wear a helmet? (the type that says C’mon I don’t need a helmet,)
thats easy- you just say it will be easier to get the kids to do it willingly if they see you doing it. also, tell him that just because he is older, that doesnt mean the risk of serious head injury is any less should he fall.
Ehh… my youngest still has time til bicycle days, and I think he still has that tennagery “I’m invicible” attitude. We actually saw a teenager get really hurt when he fell off a bike outside of our house, and the helmet really saved him! Yet that didn’t convince him… ideas anyone?
I second anonymrs’ idea about the shopping bag.
Regarding the second question, training wheels are there to teach someone to ride a bike properly. IMO, wearing a helmet is a very big part of riding. With safety, starting early never hurts.
but my son’s bike doesn’t have a place to attach anything.
There is always a way to attach a basket, it might not accept the same type of basket you husband has but there are companies that specialize in attachment hardware for hard to fit bikes.
put his hat in a shopping bag and hang it on the handles,
Not a good idea. Loose weight hanging from the handlebars can make a bike difficult to control, also it can get pulled into the front wheel.
It’s more important that your son wears his helmet than his hat. Wearing a hat is a minhag, wearing a bike helmet should not be.
How to get your child to wear a bike helmet: take him to the hospital to visit cranial injury patients. Kind of like introducing kids who think it’s cool to smoke to lung cancer patients. Or kids who pooh-pooh sunblock to skin cancer patients.
Mean? Yes. Effective? More effective than talk.
You’re the adult. Assume the role responsibly.
When i was 11 , i fell off my bike and hit my head on the side of the curb.
I was wearing a helmet bh.
Maybe Kosher Inovations should invent a “hat-helmet” all in one.
My 4 year old knows that he can never ride his bike without a helmet. There are two reasons for this:
1) Even with training wheels a child can fall, or be involved in an accident. Why take any risk?
2)Chinuch! Do you tell your young children to make Brachos, not touch muktzeh, etc? Even though they have no chiyuv? I certainly do, with the intention of “training” them to be in the habit of doing things correctly. Assuming the younger kids are old enough to understand (and if they’re riding bikes with training wheels they probably are), don’t you want them to start getting the message that we only ride a bike with a helmet on?
As far as your older son, it’s already been said — any bike store should be able to attach a basket for a reasonable cost. Think of it as the same way you would spend some money for any other Mitzvah — the Mitzvah of remaining safe is also worth money. (And it probably costs less than matzos :)!)
Have him put his hat in a backpack. That is how I used to carry stuff on my bike. About 12 years ago I lived in London and commuted to work on a bicycle.
You can buy a hard plastic hat box that is the exact shape of a black hat and it has a handle on top. He can tie it to the handle of his briefcase and it’ll be perfectly safe. Or like zachkessin wrote put it in his briefcase (in this special hatbox so it does not gt ruined.)
Mother in Israel-
He was 14.5 up to and including the day before his 15th birthday. 🙂 I supposed I should have said that he was 14.9, or something like that.
OK, I see where the confusion comes from. Generally speaking if one is going to round a number with a decimal of .9 it will be rounded up to the nearest integer, not down to the closest midpoint between two integers.
Does this 15.00833333 year old son by any chance have a twin sister?
1. Any bike can have a basket attached. Go to a bike shop – not Toys R Us. We grew up in Brooklyn without a car. Okay, without helmets too but hats do fly off, and every bike had a either a front basket, or back “saddle bag” baskets.
2. Train them young! My three year old wears one when he rides his tricycle! It doesn’t fit him very well, but it’s the concept and the habit. I don’t enforce it on the trike, but two-wheeler with training wheels – no helmet, no bike.
Please please PLEASE enforce wearing a helmet while riding a bike. I work with TBI (traumatic brain injury) patients and even small insults to the brain are devastating, both for the victim and the family. There is no such thing as a short ride where you will not need it, nor is having to wear a hat an excuse. Do what ever it takes to have that helmet on when riding. Even a tricycle.
You said that he doesn’t ride a bike, I was wondering if she does, and if so does she wear a helmet.
(You only mentioned that you were getting helmets for the younger ones and I was concerned about her.)
have him put it on the handlebars and brake and use 2 fingers to hold inside of the hat and other fingers on handle bars and brake or however many fingers he is comfortable with and wear the jacket thats how i do it and it works or jst put it in a bag like anonymrs said
dr pepper….lol
Doc: if there was a twin sister what difference would it make? She doesn’t need to wear a hat
Lol
😀 Zuberman! 😀
sms007 – tell your husband that you would like to have a husband until 120. There is a guy who lives in Monsey who was hit by a car while riding a bike without a helmet. He was in the hospital for months and is still not back to himself totally. he now goes around showing his scars to kids to get them to wear helmets. I’m sure there are many other stories.
SMS007 Tell your husband that a helmet is only needed when ones head is propelled into a solid object at roughly the traveling speed (or greater depending on gravitational vector), and when the head is heading into that say, fencepost, or car door, it is too late. Supermanism should fade out around 25-30. Good luck.
Mother in Israel-
Please forgive me if I confused you.
I thought I was able to deduce with 99.9% confidence that he had a twin sister using “Pepper Probability” and “Mother in Israel Rounding Methods”.
My only desire was to get you to chuckle, please accept my sincerest apologies if my posts caused any other outcome.
sms007 – “Yet that didn’t convince him… ideas anyone?”
I’m sure your husband considers himself Frum; well acc. to S’A he has to, otherwise he is Oiver an Issur. I just happenned to see the Halochos of Maakeh in S’A and this applies to anything dangerous. There is no R’Moshe’s Heter like on smoking on this. If you put yourself in Sakana whether- not wearing helmets, seatbelts or doing anything dangerous, you are Oiver!
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