That same weekend we did the bluebell walk, we had a major family first - a family bike ride!
During March and April, I finally taught K* how to ride a bicycle. The trick I found was to first get him riding a regular push scooter to get the idea of keeping one's balance. It didn't take too long from that for him to transfer the idea to balancing on a bike. The main struggle was getting K* to *want* to ride a bike. He's been very, very reluctant which has always baffled me. I finally bribed him with a brand new computer game or something of equivalent value.
I was really chuffed when he finally got it.
And now he's keen! On sunny days after school we've been going riding in the park. We need to build up to more challenging rides so I'm now workig on road safety and building confidence. I'm very pleased that we've got a new family activity to pursue.
Cool - you can all come cycling with us now!
ReplyDeleteNot that you'll need this information, but I taught Brian how to ride using a technique I'd read about in a parenting magazine.
ReplyDeleteFirst, you lower the seat so that the child can plant his feet flat on the ground. This gives him confidence that he can stabilize himself at any time. Then you just have him propel himself by paddling his feet along the ground.
Once he's comfortable with that, have him paddle then raise his feet slightly and coast for a while. This gives him the feeling of what it's like to coast, without leaving the comfort zone of being able to put his feet down if necessary.
Once he's gotten used to coasting with his feet slightly in the air, the next step is to paddle and coast and place the feet on the peddles without peddling.
As you can probably guess, the final step is to paddle, coast, put feet on the peddles and start peddling.
I was quite impressed with how this method broke the action down into such simple steps. Brian had been stagnating with Brent teaching him how to ride, but he managed to figure it out in an afternoon when I used this technique.
Great technique. I never thought to do any reading about how to teach bike riding.
ReplyDeleteA neighbour also mentioned that its a good idea to remove the pedals at first. It makes it real easy for them to propel themselves in that first stage.
Makes me want to go find another kid that can't ride a bike and see how much faster I can teach them!!