Then, I found a website that gave me the confidence to try it this afternoon. Bicycle.net had a great article on how to take the fear out of teaching a child to ride a bike. He claimed to be able to do it in an hour - not days on end. So, I had my husband take the training wheels off of Doodle's bike and she and I set off to try out the technique.
He was right! It took Doodle 1.5 hours to be riding around our pond on her own (and I got quite a workout running beside her.)
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| Getting started |
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| Doodle's riding on her own! |
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| Giving Mom a Run For Her Money |
The website suggests four steps:
1. Ride in a circle while you hold onto the seat and handle bars - going one direction and then the other. We did this for about 30 minutes (Bicycle.net suggests 10 minutes, but it took us longer to get the hang of it).
2. Go to a park with a large grassy field
3. Hold onto to the seat and run along side your child - like traditional methods - while on the grassy field.
4. Let go. Let them ride until they are comfortable.
For us, we did step 1 and then worked on riding the straight-a ways on the road. We tried the grass in our large back yard, but Doodle couldn't get up enough speed to keep balanced, so we headed back out to the street. I ran beside her and eventually let go and she just kept peddling by herself. Sometimes she would get distracted or stop peddling and lose balance and I would be running beside her to help her get back on track. Eventually she figured how to run into the grass when she was going to fall.
We did this all the way around our neighborhood pond - which is about a 1/2 mile! By the end, she was off and peddling by herself without my help. I'm so excited for her!
