Teaching our son to cycle

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 When our son turned about 3, we got him a real bicycle with support wheels. After about 6 months, my wife felt it was time for us to remove the support wheels  and that it was time to teach him "proper' cycling :) I felt it was a bit too early, but my wife was confident. 


So,, she took off the support wheels, and took him out to cycle every evening. This was also the time I no longer had work from home, and I was flooded with work. After about a week of trying to teach my son to cycle, my wife came back to me and said "It's only the men who are teaching the kids to cycle. Women can't handle this. So, you teach him ' ;p 


So, I started. The trouble was figuring out where to hold the cycle while he pedalled the bicycle. I tried holding the handlebars for a while, but quickly realized it was too intrusive. Pretty much the only other option was holding the backseat. Now, this required me to bend down a lot, and I was struggling with backpain in about 10 minutes. After two weeks of trying this approach, my son and I were both equally frustrated. We weren't making any progress at all. 

Before completely giving up, for some reason, I decided to check on youtube - how to teach a child to cycle ? And I found the below video - 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40n56DmQ7L4

It proposed something radically simple, and yet, it hadn't occurred to me at all. The lady said that the kid needed to experience how the cycle responds to what they do. They can never truly experience that if a parent is constantly holding the cycle attempting to keep it 'stable'. The simple solution to hold the child. The makes the child feel safe, and also allows the child to be the sole entity to engage with the cycle. 

The video claimed to teach the child in about 45 minutes. It took us about 5 days instead. Overall, the new approach was a complete success. I owe the success almost completely to the technique suggested in the video.I am glad I actually learnt how to do something from youtube :D 


I quickly realized that our son, despite learning to cycle, saw cycling as some sort of a chore to complete. We have had to force him to cycle 'atleast  3 rounds' . Something or the other kept coming up, and we haven' been able to take him cycling as consistently as we would like. 


All in all, the only thing I learnt is that it is possible to teach a three and a half year old to cycle without assistance. But it wouldn't have mattered even if he had learnt it a few years later... 




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