Teaching My Son to Ride a Bike – An Allegory for Learning and Coaching

There is pressure as a parent to guide your child past certain benchmarks in life.? They are versions of validation.? Potty training, sleeping through the night, losing their first tooth… and learning to ride a bike.

My son is the last of his friend circle to learn how to ride bike without training wheels.? He’s 7 and ? years old.

It’s not from lack of effort.? When he was 3 years old, I used to take him to the local trail and make him ride his bike next to me while I went for a run.? We did this every week until one time I took him to a trail with a very steep hill.? After that ride, he became deathly afraid of “lumps”.? He refused to ride up or down the slightest incline or decline.? He would dismount from his bike.

He’s been timid about riding a bike ever since.? He didn’t like riding with training wheels because he would tip to one side.? It felt awkward to him.

As he got older, all my neighborhood parent friends took turns trying to teach him to ride a bike.? Everyone had opinions on the best way to teach him.? No one was successful

Fast forward to when he’s 7 years old.? It’s spring.? I took him a playground near our house.? There is a sidewalk that runs the circumference of the playground.? Ben was riding his bike with training wheels in circles around the playground.? A neighborhood mother that I rarely speak to saw the training wheels and tells me “You just gotta take those training wheels off or he’ll never learn.”

“He’ll learn to ride without training wheels he’s ready,” I responded tartly.

I could feel the peer pressure.

I tried taking the training wheels off.? I tried running alongside him as he pedaled on his bike.? I ran on the sidewalk with him.? I ran on the grass.? I took him to the local park and ran alongside him on a baseball infield.? The only thing I accomplished is that when I would let go of the bike I would throw my son to the ground.? Ben stopped letting me do that.

My wife encouraged him to “glide”.? Don’t try to pedal, just push yourself.? This works.? At least he gets on his bike and is willing to coast back and forth in front of the house.

It’s June at this point in the process and the weather turns brutally hot.? In Maryland, the heat will crank up past the 90’s and the humidity is such that it can feel like it’s choking you.? Everyone goes inside for 6 weeks during this part of the year.? We stopped the bike riding efforts.

The weather started to change in mid-August.? I told Ben I want him to learn to ride his bike before it gets too cold to ride outside.? Selfishly, I didn’t want Ben to be 8 years old and not know how to ride a bike.

Then Fortnite announces a new chapter.? Iron Man will be a skin that you can earn in the battle pass.? Now I have leverage.? There is something that he wants, and I can use it to motivate him.? My wife offers that we can get him the battle pass, but he’ll have to play the game and earn the levels to get the Iron Man skin.?

When my wifie wasn’t listening, I pulled Ben aside.? “You learn to ride your bike, we’ll buy the levels.”

This began the three nights of training.

The first night he doesn’t want to pedal.? I tell him that he needs to practice pedaling.? My wife comes out to check in.? She sees him crying and offers to let him just glide.? He appeals to her and she says that he can just glide.?

“But Dad says I have to pedal!” Ben proclaims.

“I told him he needs to pedal.”? My wife threw up her hands and went in the house as if to say ‘this is your show, do what you want.’

We made minimal progress the first night.?

The second night, he insists that he wants to launch the bike on his own and refuses any help to gain momentum.? I can see that even if he gets enough speed, he doesn’t have the muscle memory to know what it should feel like when the bike is balancing beneath him.? He’ll wobble and fall.

I offered to help by holding his waist.

“No Dad.? I want to do it myself,” he says.

I insist anyway.? I keep my hands around his waist while he pushes off then begins to pedal.? I can feel seconds when he doesn’t need my support and the momentum is beginning to carry him, but he slams on the break before he can really take off.

“You need to ride further.? Stop slamming on the brakes.” I tell him.? This upset him.

?“Why are you being so harsh!”? He stood with his legs straddling the seat and tears rolled down his cheeks.? “You’re being so harsh!”?

“Because I want you to learn this.? Because this is going to be your pathway to freedom and you’re going to love it.? You’re going to ride with friends and have adventures, and the only way you’ll get that is if you learn to ride the bike.”

He took some breaths, and I forced him to keep riding.? He did more laps in front of the house.

“How many more do I need to do, Dad?”

“One more.”? I could feel he was so close.? The next ride could be the one that he gets it.? Three more times I insisted that he do one more lap.

“You keep saying one more time.? You’re lying to me, Dad!? Why are you lying!?”

“Because this is what successful people do, Ben.? They do it one more time.”

At the end of the second night, he goes to bed worried that he’ll never figure it out.? The Iron Man skin will be available a couple days, and he’s worrying that he won’t learn to ride his bike in time.? It’s the last thing he talks about as he falls asleep.? Honestly, I’m worried too, because if he doesn’t learn how to ride this bike, I’m either going to have to play Fortnite with him until he earns this skin, or he’s going to learn a difficult lesson about not always getting what you want in life.? Or, I’m going to be in very big trouble with my wife.

The third night I have to force him to go outside.? It’s the kind of August warmth that signals the transition from the blazing heat of summer days into the cool and crisp autumn air.? I’ve inflated his tires so that they won’t be flat.? I’ve raised his seat so that he can get the appropriate force on his pedals and accelerate.? Once again, Ben mounts his bike.?

He insists on launching for himself.? He pushes, then drifts to his left.? He launches and drifts to the right.? He launches a third time and the bike falls all the way to the ground because the seat is too high and Ben can’t catch himself.? After a moment of concern, he brushes himself off and stands up.

I adjusted his seat once.? Then a second time.?? I can see he’s still not getting the appropriate acceleration so that he can maintain balance.? I insist on helping him launch and extend his runway.

When I make him ride farther, Ben gets so frustrated that he starts to cry.? He brings his hands to his face and tears roll down his face.

“You’re making me struggle! Why are you making me struggle!?”

“Because you need to learn to ride your bike.? You’re going to love this!”

“No!? I don’t want to struggle!? I want to quit!”

“Ben, you can either do this, or you can go to your room.? I’m not going to let you quit on this just because it’s hard.? I want you to learn how to struggle through something and succeed.? Stop crying and get on the bike.”

He’s sitting on the concrete steps in front of my townhouse.? He considers what I’m telling him, then picks up his helmet and walks back to the bike.? The hair under his helmet is sweaty.? He’s mentally tired from the exertion.

I helped him launch.? I have my hands on his waist.? Five steps in I can feel that he has enough speed and he’s balancing himself on the seat.? I slowly let go and before he realized that my hands weren’t on his waist he glided for several seconds without me.? He slammed on the brakes and his tires skid on the concrete.? He looked up at me.? His eyes glinted with a sense of understanding.? He had felt it this time.? He understood what it should feel like to have the bike underneath him with a sense of balance.

“Ben, you just need to keep pedaling.? You were doing it.? Next time when you want to stop because you’re scared, you just need to keep pedaling.? Don’t stop pedaling.”

I put my hands on his hips again and we went again.

This time he rides for 5 full seconds.? He’s starting to smile.? He knew he could do it.

For the next 30 minutes he rode further and further.? He’s picked destinations a quarter mile away from the house when before he wouldn’t go further than 100 feet.? The sense of adventure has taken him.

Around 8:00 on the third night, after being outside for more than an hour, we returned inside.? On the same steps that he was crying earlier that night, he turns and says to me something very different.

“This was the best day ever!? Let’s come back out tomorrow and practice some more!”

I’m proud of my son.? As much as I’m proud of him, I’m relieved that he’s learned.? I’ve always said that it’s not worth stressing about – he wasn’t going to be the 18-year-old that didn’t know how to ride a bike.

But I didn’t want to wait until he was 17 years old for him to learn, either.

I think anyone that has taught another individual to do something can recognize this story arc, in the same way that anyone who has learned a challenging task can recognize the process.

As a student, we recognize the pain, the perseverance, and the desire to quit.? Usually, the desire to quit is greatest right before there is a breakthrough.

As a teacher we recognize how teaching requires equal parts bribery, cajoling, and encouragement.? Watching your pupil brings as much of a sense of relief as it does pride.

The relationship between a teacher and student isn’t harmonious.? A teacher has to point out flaws and room for improvement.? Sometimes the student is in a place to receive feedback, and sometimes they aren’t.

The characters change.? The task at hand changes.?

The story arc never does.

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