I figured out an unbelievably painless way to teach my daughter to ride a bike.
I didn't learn to ride a bike until I was 12. You can't blame me; my father tried to teach me when I was six: he dropped me, tried to pick me up, dropped me again, and fell on me. I gave up; he never pursued it; and I sheepishly pedaled a tricycle for six more years. Finally my crazy aunt (doesn't everyone have a crazy aunt?) discovered I still couldn't ride a bike, and forced me to learn.
When I was preparing to teach Robespierre how to ride a bike (how did someone as unathletic as me get stuck with this job? I certainly wasn't going to pawn it off on my father), a guy in the bike store advised me to remove the pedals so Robey could get the feel of pushing himself along and gliding. Once he got the hang of gliding, we could replace the pedals and he’d be in business. We called it the Fred Flintstone system.
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It worked, although it took quite a while for him to get the hang of gliding on a bike and translating that to balancing while pedaling. After a lot of timorous practice (hey, we're not daredevils around here. We're Jewish – we fear pain) one day he pedaled in circles inside the garage, and from then on he had it.
Cupcake never was interested in riding a bike, and I wasn't interested in teaching her, what with my laziness and her propensity for over dramatizing everything from hair brushing to loose teeth.
Think I'm exaggerating? On the last day of our recent cruise, Cupcake fell and banged her foot. As a precaution, since the next day was a travel day, I limped her down to the medical center to make sure her foot wasn't broken. The nurse assured us that it was just bruised, but she gave us an Ace bandage anyway. Cupcake worshipped her Ace bandage, wrapping and rewrapping her tiny foot all day. The next day, as we were preparing to confront airport security, Cupcake apprehensively inquired whether the security people were going to have a problem with her "chubby foot." I assured her that, no, just because her foot was wrapped in elastic did not necessarily mean she'd spend the next ten years in a foreign prison for attempted shoe terrorism.
Satisfied?
I'd accepted that she was going to be one of those people who doesn't know how to ride a bike, when her camp director assured us that she could learn to ride at camp, and suddenly I was free: she'd come home knowing how to ride and I wouldn't have to be involved. The down side was that I wouldn't collect any Fun Mom points for teaching her, but I was willing to make that tradeoff.
A week before leaving for camp, Cupcake confided that maybe she might like to know how to ride a bike before she left. I could see the wheels rotating in her brain: she didn't want to be the only one there who, at nine years old, couldn't ride a bicycle.
Drat. See above: Lazy. Unathletic. Overdramatizing.
With fake optimism, I hunted up Robey's bike and rooted in the tool box for the pliers so I could remove the pedals.
And then: I glimpsed Salvation.
The. Scooter.
“Cupcake,” I asked hopefully, “have you ever tried the scooter?” Nope, she replied.
Bingo.
“Well,” I proclaimed enthusiastically, “now’s your chance!”
I showed her how to how to push off and raise her foot so she could glide on two wheels.
She didn’t fall.
She practiced for a few days. When she spent the night at my parents’, she brought the scooter and practiced there. Stretch coached her on braking and gliding with both feet resting on the bar.
Three days later, she got on the bike and RODE. She balanced. She glided. She pedaled. She steered.
I never laid a hand on her.
Was learning to ride a bike easy for you, or traumatic?
