Our girls have been able to ride a bike for years now. They just got it somehow. I mean I wasn’t there because I was at work and Papa put in a lot of the hard work, but I saw the fruits of their labour. They love it. Knox on the other hand? Not so much.
At one point Seth removed the pedals and the training wheels from his bike. You know, to try and make it like one of those balance bike things. But he fell once and then refused to get back on it again. So we put everything back on again and hoped that he would slowly get back into it.
And it’s been slow indeed.
He’s just not into trying. This isn’t limited to riding a bike though, but that’s a story for another day. There’s some things that he has crazy resilience and perseverance for, like talking. He will tell you the story and involve you in it like no other. But things where it might end in a bit of a fail he’s not interested.
Last week we went riding and this time Seth took of the training wheels and Knox lost his damn mind. He really just fell to pieces. He ran off to the park screaming and crying and eventually only calmed down after I gave him a cuddle.
The thing is that he just really doesn’t want to. He says that we are forcing him to hurt himself because he is going to fall. So we tried to explain that it’s OK to fall as long as you get up again.
But yoh guys. He sulked for easily 40 minutes before he tried to ride a friends balance bike (that has no pedals). That worked well and I think it gave him a smidge of confidence. The thing though is that his bike doesn’t roll that easily because of the pedals. Nevertheless he worked up his confidence and soon Seth was teaching him how to ride…
It’s still a work in progress but at least he seems more keen!
4 comments
This riding a bike thing is a strange phenomena! My eldest son learnt to ride without training wheels at the age of 3 already. It was a peer pressure thing. The other kids in the complex had learned and even though they were all a year older than him, size wise, he’s the same height and was adamant he could do it, and so I taught him in literally a few minutes. Done and dusted. He started riding the actual bike with the training wheels just before he turned 2. Again, height was on his side and he loves riding his bike. My second born will be 3 in a months’ time and has absolutely no inclination to learn to ride. He has a bike with training wheels but just doesn’t want to learn. Not interested at all. Anyway, glad Knox is coming along nicely – perseverance 🙂 🙂 🙂
Yeah I think interest is a huge thing – we asked Knox if he wanted to ride this afternoon when we got home and he was like , “nah”. Oh well.
Just an observation… but maybe his seat needs to be raised (unless he’s too scared for that)? His leg looks like its too high to get a good push off in the one picture.
He is freaking out about making it higher – I thought it may help that if he is wobbling he can just put his feet down and he’ll be OK, but I might try that and just see if that helps! Thanks!!