Achievements unlocked
Aug. 31st, 2021 09:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahn-I started riding on the bike trail regularly with the kids (and there's a particular path we took a lot) when the pandemic started. When their schools were closed down we did it every other day (though it's more like weekly now). At the start of the pandemic A. (who had just turned 5) was riding a bike with training wheels, going extremely slowly, and there's a small slope that we would go on a lot that he was not able to bike up at all. Although with repeated practice he got to the point where he could usually (though very laboriously) get up the slope if he didn't get distracted halfway up, he asked why he always went so much more slowly than the rest of us. And I told him that he would go faster if he didn't have training wheels.
And in the past year-and-a-half he has a) obtained a bike without training wheels b) learned how to keep going after someone pushed him to start c) several months after that, learned to stop reliably without falling down (this was in December, because I remember I wrote in our Christmas cards that he hadn't learned how to stop yet, and he was a bit annoyed about that because he'd learned how to do it by the time we actually got the cards sent out) and d) in May, finally mastered starting by himself (this appears to be rather more complex than I had realized; it was a multi-step process that started with him being able to balance the bike upright at rest (with his feet for supports, of course), which he apparently wasn't doing! and also, relatedly, for him to have his legs grow long enough for the bike, I think).
And every time we go up that same slope I watch him easily pedal up it and think "he couldn't do that when the pandemic started, and now he can."
(D did most of the legwork teaching E. to ride, and also there wasn't a pandemic to provide a sharp time cutoff, so I don't have super good memories of how long it took for her. E didn't have a particularly strong reason to figure it out, and D had busy periods where they'd slack off on practicing, so she didn't learn until she was 8 or 9. And no, before you ask, neither of my kids would ever consent to using a balance bike.)
Anyway, D thought we should put this new skill to good use and since June our family has been biking on weekends, when we have time, to some restaurants about 3-4 miles from our house, many of which are along that same bike path, and have lunch outside. I'm really really pleased we are using our bikes as a utilitarian construct :D
-E is reading Lord of the Rings. Actually she started in the spring, after being discouraged by me -- I'd told her, based on my own experience, that she should probably not read it until 7th grade (that is, at least a year from now), but her classmate had seen the movies and she wanted to see them too, and D and I categorically insisted she not see the movies until she read the books -- and in retrospect my counsel not to do it probably made her more eager to read it :P
She did skip the first half of Fellowship (on D's and my recommendation). Then she got stuck most of the way through The Two Towers for several months -- it got slow and she went back to reading Redwall and Warrior Cats books. Then she ran out of Redwall and Warrior Cats books, so she just got back to it this week and she's just started Return of the King, which she says right now is confusing. But in general she has been really liking it, guys, she keeps saying things like "wow, this is so good!" and "I'll be sad when I don't have any more left to read," and I am so proud.
(I mean, obviously I'm being facetious about this; although I was pretty sure she would like it eventually, given her preferences, she could very well equally have been the sort of child who didn't, and that would have been okay too. But since she is that sort of child, I am going to be very happy about this :) )
And in the past year-and-a-half he has a) obtained a bike without training wheels b) learned how to keep going after someone pushed him to start c) several months after that, learned to stop reliably without falling down (this was in December, because I remember I wrote in our Christmas cards that he hadn't learned how to stop yet, and he was a bit annoyed about that because he'd learned how to do it by the time we actually got the cards sent out) and d) in May, finally mastered starting by himself (this appears to be rather more complex than I had realized; it was a multi-step process that started with him being able to balance the bike upright at rest (with his feet for supports, of course), which he apparently wasn't doing! and also, relatedly, for him to have his legs grow long enough for the bike, I think).
And every time we go up that same slope I watch him easily pedal up it and think "he couldn't do that when the pandemic started, and now he can."
(D did most of the legwork teaching E. to ride, and also there wasn't a pandemic to provide a sharp time cutoff, so I don't have super good memories of how long it took for her. E didn't have a particularly strong reason to figure it out, and D had busy periods where they'd slack off on practicing, so she didn't learn until she was 8 or 9. And no, before you ask, neither of my kids would ever consent to using a balance bike.)
Anyway, D thought we should put this new skill to good use and since June our family has been biking on weekends, when we have time, to some restaurants about 3-4 miles from our house, many of which are along that same bike path, and have lunch outside. I'm really really pleased we are using our bikes as a utilitarian construct :D
-E is reading Lord of the Rings. Actually she started in the spring, after being discouraged by me -- I'd told her, based on my own experience, that she should probably not read it until 7th grade (that is, at least a year from now), but her classmate had seen the movies and she wanted to see them too, and D and I categorically insisted she not see the movies until she read the books -- and in retrospect my counsel not to do it probably made her more eager to read it :P
She did skip the first half of Fellowship (on D's and my recommendation). Then she got stuck most of the way through The Two Towers for several months -- it got slow and she went back to reading Redwall and Warrior Cats books. Then she ran out of Redwall and Warrior Cats books, so she just got back to it this week and she's just started Return of the King, which she says right now is confusing. But in general she has been really liking it, guys, she keeps saying things like "wow, this is so good!" and "I'll be sad when I don't have any more left to read," and I am so proud.
(I mean, obviously I'm being facetious about this; although I was pretty sure she would like it eventually, given her preferences, she could very well equally have been the sort of child who didn't, and that would have been okay too. But since she is that sort of child, I am going to be very happy about this :) )
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Date: 2021-09-01 05:05 am (UTC)Congrats to E. as well on tackling LotR.
It's not clear to me that balance bikes help, marketing aside. They're great if kids like them, and not useful if not. :) Reason interpreted balance bikes and pedal bikes differently in her head somehow, so though she kind of liked hers, it was indeed completely useless towards pedaling and stopping a pedal bike....
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Date: 2021-09-03 04:43 am (UTC)Heh, I suppose I'm glad to find someone else for which balance bikes didn't work, though in another way :) I just have a bit of a knee-jerk about it because people kept extolling the virtues of balance bikes to me when my kids were slow to learn how to balance on a pedal bike... and now I'm thinking that, well, the fact that they couldn't deal with balance bikes and the fact that they were very slow to learn how to balance on a pedal bike are probably related!
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Date: 2021-09-12 09:53 pm (UTC)♥ ♥ ♥
I remember when O read LotR -- I think it was in either 7th or 8th grade -- and was also enjoying it, it was a great moment for me as well. (His older sister never got to the point of wanting to read it herself, which makes me sad, but I guess she's not an epic fantasy person and there's not much I can do about that beyond grudgingly accept that as a valid way to be :P)
And congrats to A on the bike achievement as well!
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Date: 2021-09-18 04:51 am (UTC)Aw, I'm sorry she's not an epic fantasy person! (There are all these other non-fantasy books I looked forward to sharing with E... and she doesn't want to read any of them. So I have had to accept that as valid too :P :) )