Our family must make a funny sight of a weekend as we push the kids around on their bikes.
Remember our backyard reconstruction? Our attempt at future thinking so the kids could have a flat strip to ride along?
Turns out the bike theory was pointless. The turning circle isn’t wide enough for Keira’s bike at all, and even with Riley’s you pedal three times and you’re already at the end. Then you struggle to turn around, pedal three times, and run into the same issue again. So we need to go up and out onto the streets to practice. Of course, we live on a hill just as our entire suburb is a endless series of ups-and-downs, and so this process of helping them develop the skill of riding a bike – I fear – might be a draw-out one.
Not that my son would agree. I sometimes cringe if I wonder what the people in the cars who drive past us think as I jog after him when he decides to suddenly go full tilt and need to get my hand back on the toddler bar he’s got the back. He’s over-confident; you can see it when he grips the handlebars and leans his head over to concentrate on building up speed with his little legs. He overtakes Keira and flaunts it in her face: “I’m winning!”
Yes, poor Keira. She’s not been helped by the fact we bought her the wrong bike for her birthday. It’s at least a size too big, it’s too heavy, and when she complains it’s too hard to pedal I know her complaints are (at least partially) legitimate. This is a debate Adam and I keep coming back to, as I say she should get (or we could borrow) a smaller bike to learn on at this delicate stage, before she hates bike riding altogether because it’s scary and frustrating. None of that would be helped by my son who, at that very point, rides past gloating: “I’m winning!” My husband, on the other hand, thinks I’m being ridiculous and that there’s nothing wrong with the bike at all, she just needs to use her legs more and we need to disconnect the handle brake, which she taps at the slightest moment of hesitancy, and get her competent first with the pedal brakes.
We will persist, oh yes. It will also be interesting to see which child ends up taking off their training wheels first.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I have the same anxieties about Fred who is off her training wheels but by no means proficient. We live on a dirt road and she has a small bike which isn’t designed for anything rougher than a suburban footpath. She learned to ride it when we were camping at Balnarring last year. Occasionally we take her down to the school. We really need to get her a bigger bike that can go on the dirt roads and then *I think* she’d be able to ride to school. Strangely, despite the big gaps she definitely progresses every time she rides.
You know it occurs to me now, I had a perfect suburban set up for learning to ride, and, left to my own devices, didn’t until I was 10 (and bike was my main form of transport as a twenty-something in inner city Melbourne). Once you’ve got it you’ve got it, no matter when it happens.
At the moment it sounds like there’s not much in it for Keira. When she finds her own motivation hen there’ll be no stopping her.
That’s right, P. There’s not much in it for Keira right now, really, and I rode a bike that was way too SMALL for me for a long time, and that’s probably a better thing to do than too big. I might go to our bike store and ask them what they think I should do.
Also, Melbourne is such a biking place, and Adam rides into the city regularly for work, it would be nice to set her up to be able to do similar things.