Many years ago, I spent a Saturday afternoon with my young
daughter and pre-teen son in the park across from our apartment in Evanston,
Illinois. My son and I played manly
games of nonsense and my daughter made a great effort to learn to ride her new
bicycle. (Why the bike didn’t have
training wheels is a mystery lost in time.)
She was extremely focused and very determined to learn. She’d take a couple of turns of the pedal and
then put her foot down to stop the tilt to the side. Over the course of the afternoon she made
little progress. It was always: two
pedal strokes and a foot put down to stop the bike.
I tried to help by holding the seat and walking/running next
to her, but she would have none of it.
She wanted desperately to learn by herself. So I became a cheerleader, telling her that
if she kept trying that hard, she would surely be able to ride her bike by the
next day. She worked at it, without
success, until dusk.
That evening, as I tucked her into bed, she told me that she
was very excited about the next day. She had tried very hard to ride her bike all day and was sure that she would be able to ride it successful in the morning, just as I had promised her she would.
I spent a concerned evening and night, as you can
imagine. The next morning, my daughter
insisted that I take her to the park immediately after breakfast. As I walked her and her bike across the
street, I wondered what I would say to her when she was still unable to stay
upright on the bike.
Not to worry! On her first
attempt, she wobbled a bit, but stayed upright and rode the entire length of
the block! She stopped, turned the bike
around and rode back! She soon learned
to master turns as well.
We canceled our plans for the day and took a picnic basket
to a large park on the lakefront, one with many curving paths. As my son and I climbed trees and searched
for interesting rocks and bugs, my daughter whizzed by repeatedly, ever more
confident in her new-found skills. Each time she passed, my son and I stood by the side of the path and cheered.