In Febuary, for Ellen’s fourth birthday, we bought her a bike. She picked it out herself, and seemed very pleased. But it soon became clear that her pleasure was mostly derived from ownership itself. She had no real interest in riding it. Every few weekends or so we’d take her out to the street and she would object, and say she couldn’t, and whine about going inside.
And the, a couple weeks ago — out of nowhere — she asked me if she could ride her bike when we got home. I helped her get it out of the garage, and within ten minutes she was starting and stopping on her own (her balance was learned long ago, on a “running bike”, or bike without pedals.) Now she’s on to experiment with things like balancing while stopped, and making u-turns without putting her feet down.
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