Adding a Kickstand to a Kids' Bike That Didn't Come With One

I bought my 6-year-old her first "real" bike this spring, which kicked off two small decisions: what size to get, and how to add a kickstand it didn't come with. Here's the honest version - including the part I got wrong and bought twice.

Getting the size right

My daughter is 108 cm (about 42.5 inches) and on the smaller side, so the age-based charts weren't much help. They kept pushing me between a 20-inch and a 16-inch bike.

I went with the 16-inch, and it was the right call: she can plant both feet flat on the ground at a stop, which matters enormously for a nervous new rider. A 20-inch would have left her on tiptoes - exactly how kids lose confidence.

The kickstand problem (and my mistake)

A lot of 16-inch bikes don't come with a kickstand. The reason is that 16-inch bikes usually ship with training wheels, which do the job of keeping the bike upright - so makers leave the kickstand off to save weight and cost. Once the training wheels come off, though, you're stuck. Only pricier bikes like WOOM tend to include both a kickstand and training wheels out of the box. So I went looking for an add-on, and here's where I wasted a little money.

I first bought the top-selling adjustable kickstand on Amazon. It snapped on the very first trial. The reason was obvious once I looked: the critical load-bearing pivot is plastic. So I filtered for one thing on round two - an all-metal body - and landed on the Schwinn Adjustable Kickstand (Black). It was cheaper, from an actual bike-parts maker, and it's been rock solid since.

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