This last New Years our daughter set the goal of learning to ride her bike.  Since she didn’t even have a bike at that point in time, this goal would take a fair degree of perseverance and persuasion.

As I’m sure you can guess, we were soon out shopping, and lucky enough to find a beautiful pink and purple bike on clearance.  And so the lessons began.

At first her progress was spotty.  Maybe partly because the bike was a touch tall, or because we had a lot of other things going on so chances to ride were few and far between.

Then summer came, and she tossed learning to ride in favor of learning to swim.  A change of priorities I heartily agreed with, since there’s really no comparison between huffing and puffing in the wake of a bike on 100 degree asphalt vs. paddling around in the neighborhood pool with a book beside me.

Now it’s fall, though, and apparently that’s code for time to ride.  She’s doing much better, and even gaining some independence, but today I was wondering how long it will take before she doesn’t need any verbal cues.

“Look up!  You have to look up!

“Pedal–pedal!”

“No, not that way.  Remember, that’s the brake.”

“Look up!  Watch out–you have to look forward, honey.”

So it goes.  She’s very new to the pedal-propelled toys of any variety, so she’s learning a whole new set of skills besides balancing.  It puts me to mind that learning to ride a bike is just one more time-honored kid activity that is also excellent training for adulthood.  Multi-tasking skills being honed and practiced in preparation for the juggling so essential to life.  It’s an excellent way for them to learn–they gain independence, have a great time, and learn to quickly self-correct if they don’t want skinned knees and knuckles.

If only we had similar training methods to implement for homework.