A good deal of my childhood was spent attached to the banana seat of my emerald green bike. The one with the white plastic basket adorned with equally plastic flowers. That bike and I covered a lot of real estate back in the day.
My girls have bikes, but they don’t get as much of a workout, especially since our neighborhood is replete with crazed drivers and a few local pedophiles.
Over the weekend Fiddledaddy decided he was going to teach his son to ride his nice shiny Huffy bike. This is the same son who is now 7 1/2 years old.
There are no training wheels on this bike. The last bike that he never learned how to ride had the training wheels. This was the big boy bike.
I learned later about the bike lesson so I asked, “How did it go?”
Since I saw no carnage on the driveway when I had returned home, I hoped for the best.
Fiddledaddy answered, “He has outgrown the bike.”
Blink, blink.
Evidently, the child’s knees were somewhere up under his chin, making pedaling impossible. And turning even less likely.
And so if you’re keeping score, like I am, that would be the THIRD bike that the child has outgrown before he has ever learned to ride.
Epic parental fail.
I’m thinking we’ll just hold out a few years and teach him how to drive.
And he can just deal with his disappointment in therapy.
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Take the pedals off and make him use it as a coasting bike. Assuming he knows how to pedal from his tricyle days, all he has to do is learn the balancing. In less than a week you can go buy a bike that fits him and all he’ll have to do is pedal and balance at the same time. Which usually takes all of 2 min. This has worked awesome for my kids and a whole slew of others that we know.
Good luck!
I had the same bike you did, with the basket, but my seat had strawberries on it and the bike was pink. LOVED that bike. Yes, we were able to ride quite a good ways back then with no real fear of “the real world.”
My nephew did learn how to ride, finally, but didn’t get much mileage on either of the bikes we got him before he outgrew them. They made a nice Christmas gift for someone after we put them on Freecycle.
That is why we haven’t bought Charlie a bike yet. He never grasped the pedaling concept with a tricycle and still hasn’t when we’ve “tried” a bike in a store. So Charlie is sticking with the scooter for now.
My favorite bike – purple with a white basket with daisies on the front. had the banana seat and chopper style handlebars. and the orange neon pole with flag on the back.
It makes me sad to not see kids on their bikes as much as I used to be as a kid… And even sadder when I see a kid on their bike, texting.
Oh, I hear you. A neighborhood kid nearly ran smack into the front of my moving van while texting. Scared me to death. And it scared her even worse.
I’m totally down with just waiting until he needs to learn to drive.
And MY banana seat had bright multi-colored flowers. It also had a dent in it by the end of my first day learning to ride it. Along with my back-end.
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