Thursday, January 16, 2014

Introduce your kids to bicycles early

Many parents are afraid to introduce their children to bicycles. This is quite understandable. There is indeed danger in riding bicycles. Because for one, riding a two-wheeled vehicle is already a circus act in and of itself - be it a bicycle or a motorcycle.

But here's the thing. It will only be dangerous if the rider is irresponsible, uneducated and if kids are left unsupervised during training. Again, it's better to introduce your kids to bikes early. Make sure to provide ample supervision when you do. The exhilaration of  taking that bike for a spin around the village, and the wind brushing through your face and hair will be priceless.

I also have a daughter who really wants to ride bicycles. Recently, I bought her a hybrid bike, a configuration that's weird to some of you - part BMX, part mountain bike. It has no training wheels (balancers to some of you). So yeah, you can feel free to ask me "Why did you do that?". Honestly, I dunno. I should have bought her balancers, but I didn't. Regardless, training how to ride bicycles require patience. My daughter was very eager and was quite happy when she got the bicycle. But the opposite is true when she started sitting on the saddle. She's terrified because she still do not know how to balance. My wife and I keep turns training her to ride the bicycle and here's the tricky part - different people will have different learning curves. Some people may learn to balance in a few minutes or hours. Some people will take days or longer to learn how to balance. So definitely, if you're like me who's teaching someone to ride a bike, be patient.

On second thought, perhaps I'll just buy those balancers ^_^.

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In another note and since it's a Thursday, here's my first throwback post ever. I promised in an older post that I will share with the lot of you pics from my childhood, taking bikes for a spin.





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