Abbie has been asking us to take the training wheels off her bike for the last month. Savannah just got a two-wheeler bike with training wheels so this weekend seemed like a good time for them to develop new biking skills. Once we told Abbie the plan she couldn't stop asking us when exactly the trainers were coming off.
That is, until they were actually off.
I don't think she had realized that the job of training wheels is to steady the bike. Immediately the tears began, begging for the return of safety, security, and comfort. Unfortunately, we are mean parents and said no.
We went to a parking lot across the way and the torture began. It is still unclear who was being tortured, Abbie as she was screaming at Russ to not let go of the bike, or Russ who was running around the parking lot bent in a 90 degree angle as he was holding onto the bike. This went on for quite some time.
Finally we had the idea to have Abbie count the number of times she was peddling. This helped her focus on something other than the whether or not someone was holding onto the bike and she was off. She rode across almost the entire parking lot with her first try! We are still working on starting and stopping one her own but at least now she doesn't hate us and is very, very proud of herself.
Where was Savannah in the mist of all the drama? She was perfectly content circling the parking lot happy as a clam "practicing' her bike over and over again!
1 comment:
Maybe we need to try the counting thing with Ellie. She recently inherited Lexi's old bike, which originally had training wheels (and was originally Vicki's bike), but they broke and we're too cheap to replace them. Chris tried teaching her a few weeks ago, but it wasn't a very successful endeavor.
Our friends just taught their daughter by removing the pedals as well as the training wheels. It helped her learn how to balance the bike, and then when she was ready the put the pedals back on and she took off in no time. Of course, three days later she crashed the bike and broke her arm, so...
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