Training Wheels
Training wheels Teaching M how to ride a bike didn’t go quite the way I envisioned. I really thought I’d be running behind her holding onto her seat try after try and bandaging plenty of scraped hands and knees. In reality, it was much easier than that. We made an early attempt to remove the training wheels but she seemed frozen in fear. She’d barely make one rotation of the pedals before hopping off declaring she was scared she was about to fall (even though I still had a tight grip of her seat). She didn’t allow herself to get enough speed to really take off. We were getting nowhere so we took the advice of seasoned grandparents and put the training wheels back on, but at a higher level. We taught her to listen for the sound of the training wheels hitting the pavement and how to straighten the bike back up when that happened. After a while riding this way, one of her wheels literally just fell off. She didn’t even realize she was riding without it and stopped not because s...