Learning to Ride

Learning to Ride

I don’t really remember learning how to ride a bike. I have vague memories of being in front of our house on our dead-end street, trying short distances with no training wheels… and then, suddenly, I could do it.

Years later, at Christmas with Sarah’s family, her brother Josh had bought a kid’s bike for our nephew and was removing the pedals. I didn’t understand why, but apparently, there was a growing idea that if we teach kids to ride a bike without focusing on pedaling, they will find their balance naturally as they coast. Then you add the pedals back on, and suddenly they can ride.

Years later again, when we had kids, we lived in Dallas on very busy streets. Our kids got bikes for Christmas, but we never felt good about trying to teach them to ride without training wheels because everywhere we went… there were so many cars and people.