Human training wheels don’t work for learning kids

Only when I decided I was no longer going to be human training wheels did my 6-year-old son, Braden, learn how to ride his bike.


Braden received the bike, an 18-inch-wheeled BMX-styled Huffy, for his fifth birthday, and it came with a set of normal training wheels.

The training wheels stayed on the bike through the spring and summer, but they came off in the fall. “You’re a big boy now, and you need to ride your bike without the training wheels,” I told him.

After an unsuccessful lesson in the fall – one I didn’t expect to be successful given it was the first time he was trying – he lost interest in his bike and didn’t ask to try again.

The bike went unused this spring, too, because its tires lost their air over the winter and I never got around to inflating them until just several weeks ago. I was not going to let the new air in those tires go to waste, and decided Braden was going to learn how to ride bike this summer.

The first four lessons were failures. Braden enjoyed it when I followed right behind him, making sure he didn’t fall over, but anytime I let him try on his own, he fell over and lost immediate interest in pursuing the endeavor. I made him continue, but it was a vicious cycle that kept repeating itself.

I tried having him try to balance his bike while sitting on it and not moving. I even threw in a little “Star Wars.” “Feel the force flowing through your body,” I told him. The Force was weak in him, though, as he couldn’t balance the bike.

I tried bribes. “If you ride your bike, we can call Grandpa and let him know you did it,” I said, knowing he loves to call Grandpa with good news. It’s much better than when we call Grandpa to let him know Braden was being bad.

And I tried mental tricks on him. “I was 5 when I learned how to ride a bike, and you’re 6 and can’t do it,” I told him, hoping this technique would work, although psychiatrists would probably not recommend it.

It didn’t, but it allowed me to remember how my dad had taught me how to ride a bike. Although my memory is sketchy, I remember it taking just one lesson. He simply put me on the bike, pushed me for a little bit and then let me go. After a few crashes, I realized they hurt and if I didn’t want that occurring, I had to learn how to ride on my own.

I took Braden on the grass and told him I wasn’t going to be his human training wheels anymore. He was either going to fall or he was going to learn how to ride it on his own.

Just as it had occurred when I was 5, several pushes later, he was riding the bike on his own. By the end of the lesson, he was going across our yard, the driveway and the neighboring yard. It made me proud. It also made him proud, since I had told him he needed to learn how to do it by the end of summer. He managed to do so one day after his school got out for the year.

Now, he just needs to learn how to completely tie his shoes on his own to have a successful summer.
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Originally published in The Portage County Gazette on Friday, June 10, 2011.