Saturday, June 16, 2012

Bikes


 We tried and tried to convince Tab to get rid of his training wheels but he wouldn't.  He has a hard time trying new things.  If he thinks there is even the slightest chance that he will fail he will do his best to not have to try at all.  So removing the training wheels was a tough one.  With Jason's sporadic schedule, it wasn't all that easy to go about it either.  One evening we made a go of it.

We went with the traditional hold on to the back of the seat and chase them around method. 
 Which was all fine and good...
 Except that Tab kept turning around to make sure that Jason was still holding on and would of course crash as a result.  He gave up but Benton was more than happy to give it a go.
We have since discovered a much more brilliant method.  We (when I say we, I mean I) removed the pedals from the boys bikes and they used them like those strider bikes.  They just scooted along until they got the hang of balancing their bikes.  Then I put the pedals back on and gave them a steadying push and they were off.  Start to finish, it took about 1 hour for them to figure it out this way.  Both Tab and Benton now ride without training wheels!