When the Training Wheels Come Off
Since my beloved has returned from several weeks of barely interrupted business travel, we've been catching up on family time (which partly explains the dearth of blog posts lately), and one of the family activities I wanted him here for was the removal of the training wheels. I had decided a couple of weeks ago that it was time for our boy to give "free wheeling" a go.
Here's why I made that decision: There's something about the bursting forth of spring that makes us all want to venture into something fresh, something new. Learning to ride a bike is one such adventure of self-discovery and growth, I figured. That, and I was too lazy to search for the right wrench to make the necessary adjustments to our son's less and less even (and more and more treacherous) bicycle support system while the toolkeeper was away.
Tonight, the now resident toolkeeper found the elusive wrench and loosed the nuts and bolts that had kept our firstborn upright since his fourth birthday. And I learned why the image of the parent running alongside a nearly five-year-old child on a bicycle with no training wheels is so iconic.
As I kept pace with the peddler (an excellent workout for the hamstrings, by the way), holding the back of the seat with my right hand and palming the end of the handlebars with my left as we made our way up the block, I coached and cheered for all I was worth, grabbing his hip or seizing the reigns according to need. And then a point came when the handlebars hovered out of my fingers' grasp and my grip on the seat fell away by instinct, and there he was, riding a bike.
I started to laugh. He did, too.
"You're doing it!" I said.
"I'm doing it! I'm doing it!" he echoed, and though I couldn't see his face, I knew he was smiling.
Three or four seconds and about 10 yards later, I lunged to his aid, letting him tumble slowly into the grass toward which his collision course was taking him. He was even happy to fall.
I was happy, too. I was happy that I knew when to hold on and when to let go and when to take hold again.
That, after all, is the essence of parenting.
Here's why I made that decision: There's something about the bursting forth of spring that makes us all want to venture into something fresh, something new. Learning to ride a bike is one such adventure of self-discovery and growth, I figured. That, and I was too lazy to search for the right wrench to make the necessary adjustments to our son's less and less even (and more and more treacherous) bicycle support system while the toolkeeper was away.
Tonight, the now resident toolkeeper found the elusive wrench and loosed the nuts and bolts that had kept our firstborn upright since his fourth birthday. And I learned why the image of the parent running alongside a nearly five-year-old child on a bicycle with no training wheels is so iconic.
As I kept pace with the peddler (an excellent workout for the hamstrings, by the way), holding the back of the seat with my right hand and palming the end of the handlebars with my left as we made our way up the block, I coached and cheered for all I was worth, grabbing his hip or seizing the reigns according to need. And then a point came when the handlebars hovered out of my fingers' grasp and my grip on the seat fell away by instinct, and there he was, riding a bike.
I started to laugh. He did, too.
"You're doing it!" I said.
"I'm doing it! I'm doing it!" he echoed, and though I couldn't see his face, I knew he was smiling.
Three or four seconds and about 10 yards later, I lunged to his aid, letting him tumble slowly into the grass toward which his collision course was taking him. He was even happy to fall.
I was happy, too. I was happy that I knew when to hold on and when to let go and when to take hold again.
That, after all, is the essence of parenting.
posted by Lisa Strandberg at 9:34 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home