Big Bike and the Hill
I want to raise tough kids, but sometimes I am unsure of how to do it. I want to push them and have them be comfortable being uncomfortable. It’s hard and sometimes I just want to be the dad that helps all the time. I do provide an invisible safety net, but I don’t make it very apparent to my kids because I want to test them to see how far they can actually go by themselves.
Recently, my six-year-old daughter E and my four-year-old son C went on along bike ride and walk. My daughter decided that she wanted to bring her bike. There were two sets of particularly steep hills that I wanted to walk up, and I cautioned her that bringing a bike would be really tough. She won’t be able to bike up the hill, but that didn’t deter her from wanting to take the bike. I told her that if she brought the bike, she would have to do the whole bike ride and walk by herself. I was not going to help.
E still wanted to take her bike, so that’s what she did. C has taken his balance bike before, and it is much easier to use a balanced bike because you are essentially walking the bike up the hill. The balance bike is also so much lighter, so if there’s any issues, I just pick it up and we continue our walk. He has done the walk several times with me before and he knows what to expect with his balance bike. E has done the walk, but never done it with a bike. This would be a new experience.
A few minutes into the walk, we were walking up the first deep hill and E got off the bike. She said it was too hard to paddle up and she got tired, walking her bike up part of the hill. I reminded her that I wasn’t going to help, and that was something that we agreed to before the walk. Of course, if it was really difficult, I would’ve gladly taken the bike, but I was really curious to see how far she would go. She remembered our talk before we started the walk and she decided to keep pushing the bike up the hill. It was really difficult for her, but she actually made it up the first hill.
There was a small break where she could ride her bike and catch her breath. I was really proud of her already, but as we approached the second hill, I was unsure of what would happen. When we started walking up the second steep hill, E was just pushing her bike along slowly. She didn’t want us to get too far ahead, so we made sure to stay close. C ended up coming back back-and-forth between where he wanted to go and checking up on his big sister. He probably got a lot of extra exercise in because he did that. E ended up going up the second hill without any complaining. She was such a champ and rolling her bike, slow and study up the hill. It was a long hill.
After that, the fruits of their labor paid off. It was basically downhill or flat from there, and they had a blast zooming down the hill. They watched for cars on the driveways and stopped at major roads, so I can catch up. It was actually a very enjoyable ride, and I was proud of both of them for doing it even though they were pretty tired here and there. They had so much fun zooming back home and it was worth it to them to trek up the hill.
I’m glad that E was extra tough. It wasn’t easy to roll that big bike up the hill and it was very heavy. Thankfully, she was very determined and ended up doing it all by herself, which is what I wanted. Sometimes my kids just need the extra verbal nudge and a reminder that they are tough kids. They may also need a reminder that they needed to accept the consequences of their actions. Of course, the invisible safety that was there, but today wasn’t a day where they needed it. Today was a day where they conquered some steep hills all by themselves.
