Have you seen the Tyke Toter front mount child seat? This brilliantly minimalist child bike seat is easy to install and fun for kids! This is the easiest solution I’ve found for biking with children.
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We own only one car, and we bike wherever we can. Living in California’s Silicon Valley, where the weather is beautiful for most of the year and car traffic is ridiculous, it’s an easy transportation solution. The one catch is that we have to be able to bike with kids. The Tyke Toter is my new favorite solution (disclosure: we were sent this seat to review, but I received no other compensation).
Looking for an Easy Way to Bike with Kids? Check Out the Tyke Toter!
Lightweight, safe, and easy to install, this is a brilliantly minimalist approach to biking with children. It installs in minutes, and your child is safely enclosed in your own arms as you bike. Since the seat sits right in the middle of the bike frame, having your child on board doesn’t impact the bike’s balancing at all.
I also really like that you put the child on the seat when you are already on the bike yourself. With rear-mounted seats, you have to buckle your child in first before climbing on yourself. With the Tyke Toter, your child is either in between your arms or safely on the ground.
This seat fits beautifully on Mike’s road bike as well as my beach cruiser style bike. A quick release mechanism makes it easy to take the seat on and off.
I got a very brief clip of this bike seat in action. That’s Anna saying, “Now can we go?” that you hear. She loves biking this way!
Anna waves at as many pedestrians and cars on the way. A lot of people smile and wave back!
What’s your favorite way to travel with kids? Do you have a tip about biking with children to share with us? Have you ever tried using the Tyke Toter? Leave a comment below, share your story on my Facebook page, or tag me on Instagram.
MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.
Love that last photo where you can see Anna’s hand waving. So cute!
What a great bike seat gizmo! Ingenious!
Huh, that’s kinda cool looking.
It’d be hard to bike everywhere where we live, it’s at least 5 miles or so before we get to stores or things like that and it’s on major roads with people going 60-70 miles.
What an interesting approach. We have the third wheel system on my husband’s bike – the advantage is that bigger kids can still fit on it. What are the height/weight limits on this system?
Smarty would be too big for this, I think, even though she is quite small. Their recommendation is 2-5 years old and under 45lbs. My Anna is about 40″ and 38lbs at 4 years old. It fits her fine, but I don’t think she would be comfortable on it for more than a year or so.
BRILLIANT!!!!! This is the solution I have been looking for and didn’t even know existed! Another bonus you didn’t list is that it looks like it doesn’t take much room to store when not in use. Would you recommend removing it when locking/parking the bicycle in a public space?
Yes! The fact that it doesn’t take up space to store is wonderful. We haven’t removed it when we have parked it in public for up to a day, and so far it hasn’t been stolen, but it could be. I would remove it if I were leaving it overnight, but I think in the middle of the day it isn’t immediately clear that it is easy to remove so it should be all right? I guess it depends on the neighborhood. You might be able to attach one of the anti-theft things they use for bike seats to it.