Father and Daughter Time on Bike Should Be Fun, Not Stressful

When the time comes to teach your young child to ride a bike with training wheels, will you be a fun parent or a big bad bully, like the man I witnessed outside my living room window, browbeating his 5 year old daughter because she was scared? This occurred in the cul-de-sac that I have a perfect view of, and close enough that I could hear every word. The girl had a helmet and the bike was very girlie, pink and colorful.

The father was husky and looked like a construction worker. The child was afraid to simply pedal, and he kept ordering her to pedal. She was whimpering. He demanded she pedal, and she burst into tears and got off the bike, hurrying to the fence that bordered part of the cul-de-sac, sobbing, back facing the man. He told her he was going to throw the bike out. He picked it up and gestured to the nearby dumpster. Again he said he was going to toss it if she didn't come back and get on it.

This really upset her and she returned to the bike. The girl was able to pedal just one or two revolutions at a time, then would stop, very uptight and nervous. He told her she was acting like a baby.

ALRIGHT, FOLKS. NEVER MIND THAT I DON'T HAVE KIDS. Anyone with half a mind and half a heart and an ounce of patience could clearly recognize that this man was being a bully, and HE was the one acting like a baby!

There is no timetable when it comes to teaching a 5 year old how to handle training wheels. What the sam-hill was this man's rush? Was there some deadline she had to make? If he had any maturity and rationale whatsoever, he would have told her, "Okay, today is not the day for this. We'll try again tomorrow. Let's go home. But you did good for your first lesson." (I'd like to know how well this man did on HIS first lesson swinging a golf club or doing whatever HE likes to do for fun.)

What's the rush? Even if the girl isn't ready after three weeks, so what? A bike to a 5 year old is a toy, something to have fun with. If she's not ready...GET OVER IT !