Originally Posted by
topflightpro
My brother put my nephew on the bike without pedals. He seemed to get the gliding part, but he did fall and hit his crotch on the bike while my SIL was watching. She gasped, and he started crying. My nephew is quick to cry. My brother pointed out that he hadn't started crying until his mom was there. She agreed to go back inside. And my nephew decided he wanted to try it with pedals the next day.
I texted my brother to ask how it went. It did not go well. My brother said my nephew has no balance, and he doubts he will ever learn to ride a bike. At this point, my brother said my nephew may be the first kid ever to be dropped off to college with swimmies, training wheels and velcro shoes.
This past weekend, I was pushing my son on his bike and he'd make it maybe 2 pedal rotations after I let go before he stopped. Yesterday, I was standing at one end of the driveway and gave him a push and he'd go maybe 10 yards. Last night, when my wife got home from work, I told her he had something he needed to show her outside (she hadn't seen him ride unassisted at all before). He said he needed to put his helmet on, so I said ok. While waiting for her to come out, I did the whole push thing and he went to the end of the driveway. Did it back the other way.
Then I showed him how he could start himself because he didn't want me to have to push him, and he went out to the end of the driveway. My wife came out, and I asked him if he wanted to try it in the road where the was a longer shot without stopping so he could show her. He wasn't sure, but said ok, He started off on his own, went to the end of our cul de sac (maybe 100 yards away) did 2 laps of the little roundabout there, came back, didn't slow down as he passed us and rode to the other end of the road and back (a bit over 1/4 mile), then did the cul de sac again before we could stop him. Had a giant smile on his face the whole way. I was just shocked silly that before that he'd only gone 10 yards on his own and only with help getting started and suddenly he did about a half mile as if it was nothing. Tried turning onto our driveway and immediately racked himself on top tube hitting the big lip of our drive (our driveway slopes down so the entrance is almost as tall as the curb) and crashed into a bush, but it was awesome. I asked him if he'd been secretly getting up in the middle of the night to practice. My daughter wasn't quite as extreme of a flicking of a switch, but, when they get it, they get it and boom.
Edit: I get you about the parental reaction thing though. When he wiped out at the very end, I saw he wasn't hurt and tried to downplay it so he wouldn't get scared, but my wife ran over and checked out his palms and made a deal about how brave he was being but how we needed to check his hands and get them washed (I didn't see any broken skin). I was just hoping he wasn't going to get scared and not get back in the saddle.