There's nothing like a little peer pressure.
We live close enough to our elementary (and the parking situation is nightmarish enough) that many families choose to walk to bike to school with their kids. Bunny rides her "trail-a-bike" behind her papa but now that we're a couple of weeks into school she's noticed that most kids...
are on...
their own bikes.
And those bikes...
don't have...
training wheels.
So far, J. and I have tried to expose Bunny to a variety of activities and experiences and not to push her into doing any one thing. We were pretty dogged about her learning to swim as soon as she seemed ready because her grandma lives in Hawaii after all, but other than that, we let her take things at her own pace.
When I mentioned earlier in the summer that maybe...perhaps...if she wanted...we could take the training wheels off her bike, Bunny wasn't having it. So I dropped it. But I also admit to thinking, "Heh. We'll see what happens in the fall."
I remember the kindergarten peer pressure well. My school had two bike racks in the cage on the playground: one for the training wheel bikes and one for the two-wheelers. I vividly recall watching kid and after kid take the two-wheel bikes and being too shy to take a trainer. I didn't want to get teased. As soon as I got home, I asked my mom to take off my training wheels and I practiced riding my newly liberated bike in my garage going back and forth between the two parked cars...and crashing into both of them. A lot. (Sorry Mom!)
My determination paid off, and after not very long, I was pedaling my bike proudly. No training wheels. Hooray me! I felt incredibly confident the day I could take a two-wheeler off the rack during recess.
I see that same fortitude in Bunny. For about two weeks she's been practicing on a little two-wheeler that was handed down to her from her cousin. During a playdate today, she called me and Auntie Lia out to watch her pedal that little bike. She got a good 8-10 rotations in before she realized what she was doing and stopped. With a big, surprised smile on her face.
After dinner tonight, J. was tinkering with her Trail-a-bike she looked at the bikes again and decided it was time. "Mamma," she commanded, "Take the training wheels off!" J. lept towards his socket wrench kit and within minutes, the training wheels on the Barbie bike were history. I helped lower the seat so that her feet could comfortably touch the ground, and off she went on her wobbly way, around and around the driveway, then with me, up and down the sidewalk.
Want to take bets on how it will be before she's riding her two-wheeler to school? (Remember, she's hella determined. Just like her mother.)
