I'm glad this worked for your family, but in my kids' experience this is too heavy to use as balance bike. By the time they were comfortable hoisting their de-pedaled 12" / 5.4kg bike off the ground, they'd nearly outgrown it. They preferred a cheap hand-me-down balance bike which was half the weight (the upscale ones with brakes and pneumatic tires are self-defeatingly heavier).

Depends when they start, but a bike like that would have been too heavy and too big for a ~1.8 year old.

We started with a Strider which is only 6.5lbs for the whole bike, much more manageable for a under-two year old.

Worked for me, thanks for the fond memory

Thanks for the tip!