When the axle just isn't long enough

Yesterday my in-laws took the 9 year old boy shopping for a new bicycle.  He's outgrown his current one and needed a bigger bike.  Since he's had some delays with all his medical issues, he still needs training wheels.

So they bought him a very nice bike and a set of training wheels.  I was assigned the task of putting the training wheels on the bike.  Now, the way you attach training wheels is that you typically remove the nut from each side of the back axle and in some manner attach the wheels to the axle and put the nuts back on.  But what do you do when the axle is not long enough on each side to accommodate the training wheels?

That was the question.  There are various types of training wheel configurations, they two most prevalent being a flat metal bracket as well as "C" shaped bracket variety.  Well, that's what the bike's owners manual explained, yet nothing about the length of the axle.  The kind they brought home with the bike were the "C" shaped ones which seem to require a little more axle space than the flat ones.

Ran to WalMart today at lunchtime with the hopes I could find a flat bracket set, but it didn't happen.  They had some cool looking Bell E-Z Trainer Wheels which are kind of spring loaded and claim to always allow the wheels to touch the ground and also allow the trainee to lean on turns.  But, they looked like they would require a lot of axle space, or more than a flat bracket pair of training wheels would.

So I did a little research today and came up with the following options. So here is what I learned today about what can be done when the rear axle isn't long enough on a bike to add a set of training wheels:

• return the bike
• get a longer axle, the axle is about $5, but not easy to replace, well, I've never done it.  We could probably remove the back wheel and take it to a bike store, not sure how much $ it will cost to have them do it
• replace the nuts on the axle with thinner ones (even if we do this, not sure the training wheel brackets will fit)
• teach them to ride without training wheels

I think I'm leaning towards the final option at this point.  I read a suggestion that you remove the training wheels and lower the seat so they can comfortably rest their feet on the ground. Then you let them push themselves around on the bike with their feet, the goal is to coast and learn to balance.  I think his old bike that is just a little too small will be the perfect thing to experiment with.