Pit bike for 12 year old?

[wizzzard]

My son has his 12th birthday coming up in a fortnight and he would love an off road bike.
Iv not had much experience with off road bikes and was wondering wether a 125 pit bike would be suitable or should i go for a childs crosser? What are the differences, benefits of a pit bike above a crosser?
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And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
Zeitgeist / Addendum / Moving forward

[G]

Pit bikes tend to be in a lower state of tune, but fall apart less.
A 'proper' motocross like a CR85 small wheel can be ridiculously fast - 25hp in a <80kg bike. The pit bike wouldn't be able to take the same abuse, but nor would it require the skill to make use of it.

Pit bikes probably generally have less suspension travel etc, but not such an issue for a first bike.
I'd say start with a cheap (but half-decent make) second hand pit bike and go from there.

Good thing about pit bikes is there's lots of bits available for them, though you can easily spend more than it'd cost just to buy a better bike!

[Skudd]

First thing to do is to find out where you can take your lad to legally ride the bike.
i wanted to get one for my lad but found out that even though there were loads of lads using the area for off roading there was no legal place for them to go. The local police did and still do from time to time checks on the areas with off road bikes and will seize/crush any illegal bike.

I'm not trying to put a downer on you and your son, but getting him a nice bike for it only to be taken off him would be more upsetting, as for the others doing off road most of the bikes will have been stolen at sometime or crashed beyond road use so they don't care and as usual are never the ones who get caught.
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[wizzzard]

Thanks G as always a very clear and informative answer

Thanks for the heads up with legality aswell skudd He wont be using it without me around and there is somewhere reasonably close by where we can take it (well its twenty miles away but its worth it for some decent father son time ).

Are there pit bikes aimed at children and ones at adults or is it one size fits all?
____________________
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
Zeitgeist / Addendum / Moving forward

[G]

Pit bikes come in quite a range of sizes and can be further adjusted a bit with different suspesnion/wheels and even frames. Some are around the size of at least the 85 small-wheels (85 big wheels are actually not that far off a full-size motocross bike), while others are pretty dinky.

Making an effort to look for off-road places, I've been quite surprised at how many there are - most motocross tracks seem to have a 'kids area', some with two, so to cater for smaller/less confident kids and those getting into it a bit. As I say, there are quite a lot of motocross style tracks in most areas of the country.