United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

Hi all,

My son James, age 7, robpi, is having a hard time holding onto the handle bars of his bike.

He is very limited in use of his arm and hand, his wrist is very flacid. do any of you know of a place where we can get an adaptive handle bar?

Any tips on how to hold on?

Thanks,

Tammie Knapp

We just had this same problem with Ben. We decided to get him his own bike (not a hand me down) for his birthday and none of the bikes they sold in the stores worked. He has the same floppy wrist and hand problems, plus he has a permanent contracture from the gracilis transfer, so to even reach the handle bars he was leaning waaaaaaaaay forward and on the edge of the seat. I gave up and called our local bike shop and he told me something interesting....bikes that are sold in stores for boys are actually made to fit young boys and those in their teens (who use them for BMX and those tricks they do)! The frames are longer than a bike made specifically for kids. We had Ben try a girl's bike and it was the perfect fit, but none were generic enough to use for a boy. We had to end up paying mega-money at the bike store for a bike that was made for little boys. On the plus side, we should get quite a few years out of it....I hope. If you have a local bicycle shop, call them. What we ended up getting Ben was a Diamondback RM 20, here's the link: http://www.diamondback.com/items.asp?de ... itemid=198
It's a cool bike, he loved it....for the first day *eye roll* gotta love kids, right?

Anne

Javier is just starting to get biceps- he will be 2 in May. He rides his bigwheel with one arm. He has no hand or wrist function. I'm pretty sure he will be able to ride a real bike, since he figures everything else out.


MArlyn