He Rides!

I had this post a few weeks ago where I talked about how my husband and I would sometimes sit up late at night and say, "Wow, we have totally failed as parents! We are incapable of teaching our kids to ride bikes without training wheels!"  And then finally our 7 year old daughter learned to ride, which made us feel tons better, but there were still 3 other children to teach.

Well now we have achieved 50% of our kids riding a 2 wheeled bike!

The 9 year old figured it out a couple weeks ago after a very frustrating 60 minutes out in our driveway that aged my husband and me by at least 5 years.  At least!

His desire to learn lasted for about the first 45 seconds.  But we would not let him quit.  There is a time as a parent to push your kids and a time to back off.  I think we get that judgement call wrong pretty often, but this time it was obvious that we couldn't let fear win.  The cost was far higher than just him not being able to ride a bike.  I could see the future holding many hard things our oldest would need to do, things that would be scary at first but in the end he'd be so glad he did, like going away to college or the first day of his first real job.

I let about a week pass and then when he was so excited to get his homework finished to go out and ride his bike, I casually asked, "So, are you glad now that your Dad and I forced (and it was forced) you to learn how to ride?"  He could actually say, "Yes!"

Imagine that, sometimes Mom and Dad really DO know best!


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