Bike riding for nervous parents
My daughter had been rather indifferent about riding bikes for a while. She had a glamorous two-wheeler bought by my mother for a few years, but has been rather steadfast about not having the training wheels taken off (since a brief attempt last summer). However, recently a neighborhood kid who is younger has mastered the two-wheeler herself, so it became urgent to be rid of the training wheels.
Unfortunately, both of us were fairly nervous about this transition. I didn't really learn how to bike without training wheels until I was eight or so, and I'm not someone that bikes currently (basically out of fear that I'd be killed within a year of biking in DC traffic). I actually asked my working beloved life partner to do the task of helping our daughter with the bike riding, but the neighbor kept riding her bike around and the urgency required us to take action. I also have had times when my daughter was nervous and I've gotten a bit exasperated or nit-picky ("Look, if you just pedal harder, you'll have an easier time of keeping your balance." This is a perfectly true statement, and it often has the effect of pissing my daughter off enough to give up the bike riding altogether for that day).
So we got out the wrenches and took off the wheels. Soon the easy part was over, and we were standing on the side walk, as we try to figure out how a kid (nervous about falling) and a parent (nervous about falling, about being mean to a learner, and about being nitpicky to a falling kid) can master this task.
I'm a simple person, and I like simple rules; I have trouble with using judgement, and much prefer just having a simple task that can be repeated and that doesn't require judgement. So when the simple idea of the fifty push plan, I had to do it: we'd start her up with a push from me, and then see how far she'd go. She might fall, she might freak out and stop, or she might pedal a bit until becoming unbalanced. And we'd do that simple thing (a push and find out what happens) fifty times. My job was to push and her job was to pedal, but her job wasn't to succeed. She could take advantage of the pushing to figure out the balance thing, but that wasn't her job, it was just to start pedaling fifty times. My job was not to teach anything, and her job was not to do this impossible task of riding a two-wheeler. Our job was just to launch the bike and rider fifty times.
It took me a few pushes and a few falls before I was truly calm, and not saying things nit-picking things. I just pushed, commented on well-taken falls, and high-fived on longer runs without falls, and tried as a good Prussian parent to keep the count of pushes accurate.
It was push fourteen on which my child flew away from me, the wind whipping her hair as her amazed and pleased voice cried out that she had it!
And she's been biking every non-raining, non-freezing moment she can since then.
I was telling this story to someone in the grocery store, and had another dad express interest in the fifty pushes technique, so I thought I'd pass it on. Note that my daughter was very motivated, just having trouble pushing through the last bit of it (she'd had me take the training wheels off last summer and then found it to be too much trouble and had them put back on). Also note that I'm not one of those sporting inspirational parents that just gets out there and encourages fun play easily, so the fifty pushes idea freed me to not worry about what was going on, and just do my bit and watch life take off.
Comments
Good story. We learned that for a young one to learn to ride they need to want to learn...like everything else in life.
Next comes learning riding through sand, over sticks and roots, right of way, passing, etc., etc., etc.,
Good luck!!!
Jaime
Posted by: Jaime | April 17, 2008 10:18 AM
Maybe we'll try something like this. N. still has the training wheels on his bike (and has for a couple years). I don't think he's motivated to take them off yet though. Maybe this summer..
And, thanks for putting me on your blogroll. That really made my day.
Posted by: Steph Lovelady | April 17, 2008 08:15 AM