Patience Rewarded

Our youngset son rode without training wheels last night.






*This little red bike is so awesome. It was a bike shop purchased GT. Cost way more than a walmart POS but it has going through 2kids and still as good as new, except the rear tire is bald from burnouts from the 1st kid. Just bought a new tire for it.

You have no idea how big a deal this is. He has had the ability for a long time, but is so neurotic and stubborn that he just wouldn't do it. With both parents being cyclists it has been hard to just let it go and not pressure him.

With him on training wheels we were really limited in what we could do for family rides. My oldest has been off training wheels for years now and we were able to go on the bike path regularly with him. The youngest would go for a little ways on the path but then he'd get to a hill and get part way up then put his brakes on. And we'd have to push him. We just couldn't go too far with him.

Training wheels actually teach the wrong way how to ride a bike. They teach turning the handlebars in stead of leaning to turn. So transitioning from training wheels to no training wheels was too hard on him. One of the best things we did was to get him off his training wheel bike and onto a Tag-along.

At first he was freaked out on the Tag-a-long when taking turns because of how you have to lean on a bicycle in a turn. Now trying a little bike w/o trainig wheels has been much better for him because he understands better the right way to balance.

In addition, we have the seat really low so that he can 'scooter' around. One of the best way to teach kids how to balance is to take the cranks off and just let them scooter around.

Anyway it was a huge breakthrough for us. And he is so proud. Now we just gotta get him to figure out how to start. And keep him from crashing too hard, because one crash and he'll want to give it up for a while.

My older one is all into trying to track stand now, and he is almost there.