The most important thing about giving your child a mini ATV is teaching him about safety and making sure that he follows all of the safety rules at all times. You already know this if you are a parent. But what you may not realize is that no matter how much you talk to your child about safety, if you aren’t practicing the same safety rules your child will wonder if they are really that important after all.

Children will mimic what their parents do. It doesn’t matter what you say to them, they want to be like you and so they will do the same things you do. You try to set a good example for your children everywhere else, make sure that you are doing the same thing when you are on the trails. Wear your helmet at all times when your child is with you. Practice safe riding at all times when your child is with you. Don’t show off when your child is with you. Have fun, but don’t do things on your ATV that you wouldn’t want your child to do on his mini ATV.

Mini ATV’s look just like a full size ATV, but smaller. However, they don’t necessarily act like a full size ATV. A mini ATV doesn’t have the engine capacity to keep up with a full size ATV, so if you ride too fast or too far ahead, your child will be unable to keep up with you and may try unsafe things to catch up, like going off the trail to take a short cut. Slow down when you are riding with your child so that he has fun rather than having a frustrating time. The suspension is not the same on both bikes either. A mini ATV cannot handle the jumps and the steep hills at a fast speed that the full sized ATV can handle. This is where the showing off part comes in. Don’t do those jumps and avoid the hills and your child won’t do them either.


Never let your child ride alone. You never know what could happen and you would never forgive yourself if something did happen that you could have prevented just by being there.