Dr. Priya Nair

I'm a paediatric occupational therapist, which means I spend my professional life thinking about how children interact with the physical world — how they build motor skills, process sensory input, develop the body awareness that lets them do things like ride a bike without consciously thinking about balance.

When parents come to me in clinic and ask about bikes, I give them the same advice I give here: the equipment matters far less than the fit, and the fit matters far less than the child's readiness. But within those parameters, there's a huge amount of variation in what's actually well-designed for children versus what's a scaled-down adult product with a cartoon on it.

My involvement with KiddingZone started when Eric asked if I'd look at some helmet fit data he was compiling. One conversation became a review, which became a column, which became a role. I focus primarily on helmets and safety gear — it's the area where my clinical background is most directly useful, and it's the area where I think parents most need an evidence-based voice rather than just a star rating.

Helmets are complicated. Fit is everything, certification standards vary by market, and the "safe" helmet for a two-year-old learning to walk a balance bike is a different object to the right helmet for an eleven-year-old doing trail riding. I try to cut through the noise and explain what the standards actually mean, what to look for when a helmet is on a real child's head, and which products have genuinely impressed me in controlled and real-world conditions.

I have two kids — Rishi (8) and Anaya (5) — who are excellent and completely unbiased test subjects. They both cycle. Rishi is enthusiastic and fearless. Anaya is precise and cautious. Between them, they give me a fairly complete picture of how gear performs at both ends of the confidence spectrum.