We Tackled Them and Won

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recently my girls have had two different friends that have learned how to ride their bikes without training wheels. The first friend was taught by a neighborhood friend how to do it about a year ago. Learning that encouraged my girls to ask dad to take off the training wheels and help them learn how to do it. It turned into lots of tears, frustration, anger and a demand to put the training wheels back on.  So we did and we’ve been riding them with training wheels ever since. This last week we invited a friend of Mirian’s over to play and found in the process she had taught herself how to ride her bike without training wheels. So while she was here a 4 year old tried to teach my four year old how to do by herself.  Mirian picked up pretty quickly but was still struggling with part of it.  When Savannah got home Mirian showed her how close she was getting which resulted in Savannah asking me to take off her training wheels too.  They kept falling but were tough and just kept practicing and practicing despite how difficult it was to learn in our small narrow driveway.  If Maddie could do it they could too. Finally at one point Mirian fell and hurt her knee a bit, cried and demanded that this is why mom and dad should make them wear knee pads, elbow pads, and helmets.  I explained that me and dad learned how to ride a bike with out them and fell many times too. It made us tougher and made us not want to fall as much, we lived, and we learned how to ride a bike.  We figured out a way to pad those knees a bit more though so the fall wasn’t so rough – dad’s socks.

So when dad got home on Saturday from doing his two days of Philmont training for Boy Scouts they wanted to go over to the big church parking lot and show him.  Mirian picked it up almost immediately now that she had lots of room to swerve and figure it out. She just takes off at top speed (in which you hope she doesn’t crash) and was tearing around the parking lot, hitting the breaks and burning rubber coming to a complete stop.  She has some Tippett’s blood in her.  It was a moment where you were super proud of her. She figured it out all by herself and did it. She was determined and accomplished it.

 

 

Savannah is Miss Hesitant, barely pushing hard enough on the pedal to get the bike barely moving. Trying to convince her that it’s easier to stay upright if she moves faster was a little tougher than Mirian. She finally picked it up. She is still is more hesitant, crashes a bit more, but she too figured it out by herself.  They were so proud of themselves, and have been wanting to ride their bikes ever since. I never thought we’d see the day when they’d be brave enough to ever learn. They surprised me even more so when they did it on their own without our help.  Way to go girls!