How To Teach A Kid To Skateboard

Some of us might want to teach our kids skateboarding whereas some of us are afraid whether it’s the same thing? Well, skating experts have confirmed that it’s completely safe to get your kid on a skateboard if he is five years old or more. Some professional trainers even say that you can even teach a three-year-old kid to skate but only if he is interested in this sport.

If you, at such a young age, can’t manage to slide and roll the skateboard to more than six feet without tipping over, it doesn’t mean your kids won’t be able to do so. Remember that at a young age, his bones are flexible and green and his brain is super productive. The skills he learns at this age will become a part of his developed mind forever. All in all, there’s no better time or age to teach your kids skateboarding than now!

But the question that arises here is how to teach a kid to skateboard? Well, it’s easy since all you have to do is to follow the given steps.

1. Teach Him To Maintain The Safety

Just make sure you have enough time to monitor him all the time when he is at the board. Don’t forget, your kid’s bones are fragile and they can’t endure the shock or immense landing impact. And since kids are mostly curious at this age, they might rush towards advanced skateboarding tricks, making them injured and their bones fractured.

Therefore, it’s always recommended to start practicing on a soft carpet or grass. This will not only provide a safe landing site for your kid but also prevent the skateboard from sliding uncontrollably. Unfortunately, there’s nothing like balance wheels that can mitigate the whole skateboard learning thing for your child but you can purchase mini-boards, designed exclusively for kids.

Besides mini skateboards, you should also purchase pads and helmets for him which would keep him safe from fatal head injuries and road rashes. And most importantly, these safety gears will boost your kid’s confidence so he won’t be scared anymore to slide without any support.

2. Teach Him To Maintain Balance

Once covering your kid completely with all the safety gear and pads, he is all-prepared to place his foot on the skateboard. The very first thing your kid needs to learn in this regard is how to maintain balance while standing over the skateboard. For this, tell him that to stay balanced, he has to keep his center of gravity (his head) at the middlemost point.

In other words, his feet should be on the bolts, above the wheels, and his head should be right in between his feet. Also, he needs to flex his knees a little to gain more traction and control over the board. Once he’d learn how to maintain the perfect stance, the next step is to figure out about his front foot.

Don’t think that he’d have a right front foot if he has a right dominating hand since this theory often proved wrong. To find out the front foot, just let him stand over the board using both feet, as the front foot, one by one. If he’d be more comfortable with the right foot, it means the front one and vice versa.

3. Teach Him To Cruise

Now comes the most difficult part of the whole learning curve; to cruise and push the skateboard forward. First of all, you need to encourage your kids and uplift their morale so that they can do this. He might be a little scared and one or two failed attempts could even lower his confidence further. Thus, your encouragement and support are the things your kid requires the most at this stage.

Speaking of teaching methods then teach him to push the skateboard first. For this, tell him that he needs to push the board using his back foot while keeping the front foot onto the deck, over the bolt, firmly and straightly. After pushing the board a little, the next thing is to get your back foot back onto the deck. For this, you’d have to reduce your weight onto the deck as much as possible.

The best way of doing so is to stand on your front foot toe for a millisecond and hop a little. While doing so, get your back foot on the board. Also, while doing so, try to change the orientation of your front foot to 90° so the skateboard could start cruising.

4. Teach Him To Tic-Tac

After your kid learns how to maintain balance and a perfect stance on the board and how to cruise over it, the next thing he can learn is his first skateboard trick. Don’t worry, it’s not that flip-twist sort of trick but a basic one that would help your kid to keep the board moving in a forwarding direction without pushing it.

We called this trick Tic-tac and first of all, you need to teach your kid how to exert a little more weight on the tail of the board so its front wheels are lifted slightly. The more your back foot is present on the tail, the lesser the front wheels rise. In other words, if only the ball of your back foot will be on the tail of the board, the front edge will raise too much (a thing you should never do).

It’s better to keep your entire back foot on the tail and put a little weight on it. This will raise the front wheels slightly. When in the air, pivot the board to the left (only a few degrees), before landing on the ground again. After this, raise the front edge of the board again but this time, pivot it towards the right side. Keep repeating the process whenever the board begins to slow down. On learning this trick, your kids would be able to roll around the board without taking their back foot off of it, over and over again.