When we got home from the state fair (the subject of a forthcoming dispatch), a bike was sitting in our driveway. My wife’s cousin had gotten it for our daughter. It looked cool. She was excited.
There was just one problem: my daughter didn’t know how to ride a bike without training wheels.
So she and I headed out on a Sunday night to start work.
It had been a year since she’d ridden her bike with training wheels. To jump back in with a brand new (bigger) bike was a tall task.
The entire enterprise was a practice in parenting as much as it was biking.
We worked on it for twenty minutes a piece on Sunday and Monday. She hadn’t had a breakthrough yet, and she was scared of getting hurt. I knew I had to do something different. My daughter already had a bike her size, and thanks to the kindness of a local bike shop proprietor who filled the tires for free, we went out Tuesday night looking for progress.
After fifteen minutes, she was in tears and ready to go. I asked her to try for just five more minutes. Before we left, I had a video of her riding for ten seconds on her own. She watched the video over and over on our way home. When it was time to head back out the next night, she watched it again and again to get herself primed.
This time, she put it all together, and this time, my video captured forty-five seconds of pure pedaling, turning, and braking confidence.
To say I was proud of her would be an understatement. To say she was proud of herself would be an even greater understatement.
It was the educational and familial highlight of our week.
Learning Together 