text: how do i teach my brother to ride bike before summer vacation? he's 11 years old and no one ever has time to teach him so i feel responsible to do so. he knows the basics as far as brakes and he's learning to push off. anything to help his balance or others? my little brother learned by starting with training wheels, but here's what we did a little differently.  as soon as he started showing some confidence, we bent the arms of the training wheels so that the bike could lean a little farther over before the wheels made contact with the ground.  then, when we was confident with that, we removed one of the training wheels altogether, until in the end, he really didn't need them anymore.  it was a progressive way to give him less and less support but still the illusion of a safety net.  hope this helps.