Our eldest, Ben, decided one day in February that he wanted to learn to ride without stabilisers and went outside into the street and in the few short moments it took Aidan and I to grab a coat and suitable shoes managed to teach himself. He does not have much patience for waiting and figured "How hard can it be?", so he just kept pedalling until he stayed upright and in a straight line.
Sam on the other hand had used so many delaying tactics to put off the moment he would have to go it alone that I began to think it would never happen. We tried bribing him with treats which is usually a winner, we appealed to his pride and showed him that all the other boys in the street could do it and even took off the stabilisers so that if he wanted to ride with everybody else it would have to be like a big boy - nothing! He would cry and insist he did not want to ride, anytime it was mentioned.
How 2 kids could be any more different I do not know. Sam is so cautious by comparison with Ben who flings himself out into the ether and trusts to some kind of divine hope that he won't get injured. Sam likes to know he will be safe. You can almost see him thinking ahead to the consequences.
So, to our surprise, on Monday he got dressed to go out and play in the street and asked Daddy to help him learn to ride. Not sure what made him change his mind. He does this - thinks things over in his head and just comes to a decision and sticks by it. So out into the street they went. It was perfect timing because all the neighbours were not home so he had the street to himself with his brother and Daddy.
I gave them 15 minutes before following them out and by that time Sam had mastered the riding in a straight line thing but still needed someone to help him push off. Some encouraging clapping and yahooing, lots of hugs and high fives and another hour of back and forth up and down the street and he could do a tip toe running start on his own and turn in a nice tight circle at either end of he street. Miraculous!
What it is about boys in particular that they don't set limits on what they can achieve. By the end of the next day, Sam was copying his elder brother, racing down the street with his legs up on the handlebars, rubbing his chin and calling out "suspicious" or riding while standing up in the saddle and mounting the kerb at every opportunity. I had to intervene when he thought he could ride down the hill and try and jump over a ramp used by the big kids in the estate when they skateboard. Evil Kneivel eat your heart out!
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