My once 8-year-old son was pretty adventurous, and we’d always encouraged him to try new things. But, when he was 4 and we attempted to teach him how to ride a two-wheeler, he adamantly refused.
“Why do I need to learn to ride a bike? Will I die if I don’t? I don’t have to.”
He insisted he wasn’t afraid to fall. He just said he “didn’t feel like it.”
We tried again the next summer… and the next… he loved zooming around on his scooter, he was a pro at rollerblades, but he outright refused to sit on a bike.
We reasoned. We pled. We bribed. We sent his bike with him to Ottawa to learn with his grandfather. We brought over friends and had them ride their bikes. Then one summer, when we dangled a new shiny bike like a carrot in front of him, he took the bait, only to sit on it for 10 minutes and decide he didn’t want to learn.
FINALLY, when the nice weather moved in the next year, he turned to me and, out of the blue, he admitted, “I’m kinda curious to get on my bike,” and after a 10-minute tutorial he was riding solo.
And that was that. We couldn’t get him off the thing. We’d go on 3-4 bike rides a day. We took our bikes to different parks. He wanted to ride day and night.
UGGHHHHH! Why this child decided to take such an adamant stance against learning in the first place I’ll never know! But I think it dragged on because he wanted to be in control. He wanted to decide when it was time to ride on his own terms. And he did.
So, I guess the moral of the story is: kids have to learn certain things in their own time. And when we give them that time, they eventually come around. It’s all about being patient.
But I may have gained some more white hairs in the process…
A full-time work-from-home mom, Jennifer Cox (our “Supermom in Training”) loves dabbling in healthy cooking, craft projects, family outings, and more, sharing with readers everything she knows about being an (almost) superhero mommy.
