Riding a Bike

For her first birthday, Emry received a Strider bike. If you aren’t familiar with what that is, it’s one of those balance bikes that have no pedals. It was the forerunner in that industry and Ed thought it ingenious: teach a kid to balance and then how to pedal. For Emry, it ended up being ironic. The tiny thing was barely as tall as the handlebars and she wouldn’t learn to walk until she was 18 months old, let alone ride a bike. When she finally grew enough to use it, her sense of caution didn’t allow her to do anything put walk it around. She wouldn’t glide with it, and she wouldn’t go down a hill on it if you paid her! So when she turned four, we bought her a bike with pedals. Which gave Ethan the Strider...

 

After our experience with Emry, I wasn’t all that convinced that the Strider was the end-all of learning to a ride a bike. Granted, my experience was piecemeal. All I had was my dad’s old bike. At first I had to have blocks attached to reach the pedals. Then we had a gravel driveway. I honestly don’t remember learning to ride a bike. I just know I could at some point by the time I was eight, and I got a bike of my own sometime around the age of nine or ten. I can’t Strider would have made any difference in the midst of all that. Emry learned to ride without training wheels a few months after she turned five. It took several days, some tears, and lots of OCD frustration. But with Ethan…

 

Well, by the time Emry learned to ride without training wheels Ethan was doing two things very well: 1) gliding down our driveway and onto the sidewalks with the Strider as fast as he could, and 2) pedaling his little Spider Man bike with training wheels all over the place. But for some reason, meshing those two skills together terrified him. He wouldn’t glide down the drive on his Spider Man bike if we took the training wheels off. And sometimes he just wanted pedals on the Strider. Winter came and we set it all aside. Maybe next year…

 

And now here we are: next year. But the same fear prevailed and he wouldn’t touch his Spider Man bike if we took the training wheels off. But then Emry got a new (bigger) bike for her birthday and, suddenly, he decided that maybehe would give it a try. Only not the way Emry did it. He refused to coast down the driveway. Instead, he’d walk the Spider Man bike down to the sidewalk, attempt to kick off with his feet and start pedaling. It wasn’t going well, Ed’s arguments that he should just coast down the hill did not prevail, and I finally took hold of the back of the seat, told him to put his feet up and pushed. It worked! He only went a few feet before wobbling over into the grass, but flush with success he hopped back up and started again. Emry, who really is a good big sister, came along side to help. And within ten minutes, we had our little man riding up and down the sidewalk as fast as his little legs could pedal. Soon thereafter, he coasted down our drive and off he went.

So, yes, the balance bike can work. What took Emry days took Ethan mere minutes. But it does depend on the child. And if early indicators are right, I think Ellyson will be more like Ethan and throw caution to the wind. I’ll just need to have the Band-Aids ready...