You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Training Wheels

Oh No! Tomorrow is Bike Rodeo at the kidlets' school, and The Bunny refuses to take her bike with the training wheels.

And who can blame her? It's just not cool to be in THIRD GRADE, MAMA, and NOBODY IN THIRD GRADE wants to go to school with training wheels.

Yes. I am a bad parent. When The Pony turned 6, we finally got off the dime and bought her a bike with training wheels. The problem with waiting until she turned 6 (which, to be fair, was only kindergarten) was that she was so tall that none of the bikes big enough for her body actually came with training wheels.

While I wasn't looking, apparently all the parenting manuals were revised to mandate that kids get two wheelers at age 3, and then they lose the training wheels and get $600 bikes before they are 4 feet tall. Why the hell did I not get that memo?

Because for the 4 foot 1 inch kindergarten Pony, we had to buy a bigger bike and jury-rig* training wheels onto it, which was entirely counterproductive as it merely made riding the bike entirely unbalanced and unpredictible, making The Pony truly terrified of what it would be like without what little assistance they provided.

So, thinking ahead, we got training wheels on a smaller bike for The Bunny. But then, we didn't follow through on actually taking them off. Plus, since we live in A Scarier World than we did as kids, our kidlets are not encouraged to take their bikes out of the garage and come back around dinner time. No way. Our kidlets are to be accompanied to the park behind our back yard and attended by an adult at all times. And if said adult is unprepared to run alongside a bicycle, then kidlet walks.

So, The Bunny has had very little bike riding time. And now the rubber hits the road, because training wheels are NOT ACCEPTABLE AT SCHOOL.

So, we took The Pony's big kid bike (absolutely no training wheels) to the park, where we could practice on grass before trying scary asphalt. She climbed onto the bike, pushed off, and suddenly realized that she was doing it all by herself. I had been "holding" the seat, but she didn't need that at all. She is a bike rider.

And it was marvellous to see her curvetting across the large field with such perfect balance and calm. She pedalled through grass, around the bases on the sandlot, and across the concrete sidewalks. She thinks she needs help to get onto the bike and get it started, but I wasn't really even touching it.

This weekend is probably going to have to be Buying A Big Kid Bike for the Bunny. How exciting.

*As a former litigator, I just love using this word.