He wants to ride his bicycle!

I found the post on Facebook about teaching my youngest to ride his bike.  Post here for posterity. Enjoy.


One of the neatest bonding experiences between parent and child is learning how to ride a bike. We’ve been out 5 times. From our initial outing with next to no ability to balance while getting oriented to how the machine works while being pushed to being able to ride in a straight line without assistance to learning how to turn. Today we worked on reducing our turning radius and maintaining enough speed to get through a turn while not having the bike trip over the pedal in the turn and not turning show sharp that the bike drops.

Today the wind was blowing stronger than we’ve experienced while learning. My boy did great while the wind was batting him and the bike around. There were a few stumbles and falls while learning to turn in a reduced space. Some pretty good falls too.
The last fall was a dandy. He got jabbed in the gut with the handle bar and landed on his hands and knees. I applaud his efforts because he made the sharpest turn yet. “I’m done” he says. “That’s fine. You’ve made a ton of progress today in the most challenging environment yet! Great job!” Given the intensity of this particular booboo, I totally get where he’s coming from. He got up quite a few times today and when he says he’s done he means it. I pick up his bike and I’m straddling it as we’re making our way to the car. “Do you want to ride to the car?” “Okay” with a certain tone and candor in his voice. I get off the bike. He gets on and takes off. As he comes around the turn into the final stretch I’m yelling and clapping for him. He cruises to the car. Gets off and beams from ear to ear as coasts to me and the car. “Excellent work Jak - absolutely excellent!!!” We put the bike in the trunk and gets in the car. After a moment of silence I look at him and say “I thought you were done.” He looks at me with a look and grin being proud of what he did. “You tricked me”. “No dude. All I did was ask a question. You made the decision.” Jak is showing the Borman grit and not giving up - giving it that one more college try and ending our session not with a quit but with a HUGE SUCCESS!

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