Over two afternoons this past week, Ben has successfully learnt to ride his bike without the stabilisers. He got his bike for his third birthday, and by the end of that day was riding it like a natural. Since then he tears around on his bike and really enjoys riding it. It is getting slightly too small though, and the bikes that are of a suitable size for him, don’t come with stabilisers. So the challenge was to get him to ride it without, so that a new bike could be bought for Christmas.
I envisaged it taking a long time, but Ben proved me wrong. Wednesday afternoon we spent about an hour outside, and progressed from him having a rolling start with me pushing him, to just rolling down the hill and attempting a few pedals. He ended up on the floor quite a lot – luckily wearing his helmet, knee and elbow pads. We called it a day before he got too bored.
Unbeknownst to us he had been watched by his friend from accross the road, a little girl who is 3 months older than him. Friday afternoon she had got her dad outside and had taken the stabilisers off her bike. For the next hour or so the two of them just seemed to grasp how it was done, and were quite happily pushing off with one foot and riding around like they had always been doing it. There were a few crashes – apparantly it was the bikes, and not them.
I think the competition helped, neither of them likes being left behind. But the end result was, that Ben can now cycle around without stabilisers, and is rightly proud of himself.
I was amazed at how fast they both picked it up. I can only vaguely remember learning to ride myself aged about 5 or 6. I have an impression that it took a long time but I guess I’ll have to see if my parent remember. Anyway, I was expecting it to take a while too… just one of those “sounds harder than it is” moments in parenting, I guess.