Finally, he’s riding a two-wheeler.
Our son is not what you would call athletic and doesn’t care for sports in general. We have to bribe him (withholding computer and DS time) to go outside. Once outside, he enjoys spending time finding bugs and lizards or playing in the dirt.
One of the things he will do when we send him outside is ride his scooter. When he first started riding he wasn’t very coordinated and didn’t really ride the scooter so much as he sort of walked it. The more he was outside with the scooter you could see improvement each time. Eventually he actually started riding it with both feet off the ground at times and not falling over.
We have been bugging him a lot lately because he couldn’t ride a bike and wouldn’t even try. Yesterday I was standing at the kitchen window and saw the neighbor boy riding a two-wheeler without training wheels. The neighbor boy is 5 and very small for his age where as Sterling is 8 and big for his age. I turned and told Sterling that Logan was riding a two-wheeler and he ran to the window to see but was a tad to late.
Today I decided to try the bike thing again so I told him to go get his helmet and I would help him. I was amazed because within about 5 minutes of being outside he was riding down the sidewalk without assistance from me or training wheels. He still is afraid to try and turn the bike in the other direction while it is in motion, but he is riding. Richard tried many times before today to get Sterling to ride and was making little progress. He made the comment to that effect “Oh sure, I try for hours with him and mom is out here for 5 minutes and has him riding down the sidewalk”. I had a feeling that Sterling would do well today because he was much more confident about his balance on his scooter. I kept reminding him to focus on his balance and the rest would come.
We are all very proud of him and he is proud of himself as well. We have to keep practicing the braking and the turning, but his confidence gets stronger and stronger every time he gets on the bike. Way to go, Sterling!