Mum & Dad gave Joel & Lily bicycles for their birthdays the year before last. They have enjoyed riding them with stabilisers on for a year and a half now, but sometimes I think the additional weight makes it hard going. At 6 1/2 now I was thinking that it’s about time Lily ditched the training wheels and learned to ride properly.

I casually mentioned this on Tuesday, on the way home, in a speculative sometime-this-summer kind of way. Introducing the idea, so to speak. Lily, fairly predictably, expressed many & varied concerns. What if she were to fall over? What if her bike were to crush her in a freak riding accident? What if she were to hit a tree, the tree fall over, and break the house? What if she were to ride into oncoming traffic? I suggested that maybe starting out to learn in the back garden would at least eliminate the danger of oncoming traffic, and reduce the risk of serious injury. We left it there.

The following day on the way home, Lily raised the subject again, and asked if today was the day? To be honest, I had envisioned a weekend, but given the good weather this week, I said we could probably do it that evening. She went through the risks again, and when she asked “what happens if I fall off and cut my knee?” and I replied “well, in that case you’d probably bleed to death” she seemed to decide that she was happy with the level of risk the project presented.

I went with a very hands-off approach of basically setting her off and seeing what happened. What happened was she got the hang of it really quickly (with much glossing over of slightly scraped knees & legs which got in the way of pedals, etc. – I felt sympathy but also feared if we stopped to nurse each wound we’d never achieve anything. I adopted a strategy of “ooh yes, that looks bad – why don’t we sort it out later?” which against expectation appeared to work). By the time Daddy came home, she managed (for the first time) to go around the oak & apple trees on the far side of the lawn and back again without falling over when slowing down to turn the corner. At this point, the main problem was setting off by herself – she really hadn’t got it, so I had to set her off with a shove each time.

This evening (Friday) she was keen to ride more bike (actually, she was keen at breakfast but given that we’ve eliminated the TV before school because of the ructions it causes, getting into playing-in-the-garden seems even more mentalist) so I set her going, and gave her a quick lesson in “starting yourself off”. We raised the seat a little, and off she went.

Proper actual bike riding.

Two things here.

1. She’s wearing one of Grandad Tom’s t-shirts because her dress got wet at Nana & Grandad’s and she was so keen to ride her bike she didn’t want to get changed.

2. This bike was a present from my Mum & Dad. My Mum isn’t going to get to see this. That makes me quite sad. However, I know that she would be proud of Our Lil getting on & doing it.

Another part of this, is… my parents have always told of how when I was learning to ride a 2-wheeler, I kept falling off & getting back on whereas AntiKaggs stopped to nurse each bump along the way. Left to herself, Lily would have been properly in the latter camp, and to be honest I’m amazed the “let’s sort it out later” strategy worked. She has taken to this like a fish to water with hardly any complaining (during the process, at least…). The cynical, self-deprecating part of me says that (as with the toilet training which for Lily took less than a week) we’ve left it so late that it’s about blimmin’ time which is why she’s picked it up so quickly, but another part of me just wants to give her full credit.

I’m concerned that she’s generally a worrier and her inner (and also on this occasion, her outer) voices shout “I can’t do it”. It turns out, with much positivity, encouragement and shouting “You can do it!” we can overcome this, and show her just what she can do.

And when we’re not in the back garden, there will be a cycling helmet involved.

P.S. I’ve suggested the same move to Joel. He’s not ready. Shame.