Learning to ride a bike without training wheels
I wanted to put up a post on this topic because we finally had a breakthrough with our 6 year old. He has issues with gross motor skills due to ASD and also trouble concentrating on a task when there are distractions. You can imagine how many distractions there are when trying to ride a bike on the footpath. And he just couldn't seem to find his balance. The main problem I think is that he is such a perfectionist and has always known this would be difficult so didn't really want to try and then fail once again.
Anyway, we tried everything anyone ever advised us to help him gain his balance and some confidence. Nothing made a difference. This is the part I want to share in case anyone is in the same boat: we finally gave up and got him a scooter. He loved it from the get go even though he wasn't actually riding it properly. For ages he looked so awkward pushing the thing all hunched over, but he was happy so we eased off, just trying to get him to stand up tall. Recently we noticed he was actually starting to look good on it, and then we saw that he had his balance on the scooter. Hmmmm. We wondered if that feeling of balance might transfer to the bike, and sure enough BINGO! He had it. We were ecstatic, made a huge deal out of it with a celebration dinner etc and now he's bombing around on his bike like a pro.
So my advice to anyone struggling to get their child to learn to ride the bike, start with a scooter. It may just be the thing for you too.
susand 1:42 p.m., 23 May
Learning to ride a bike cont...
Hi and well done with the scooter. We were having similar problems with our son who was almost 8. What we did was remove the pedals on the bike (leave the crank in place just unscrew the foot plates) and got him to coast along pushing himself with two feet. Within a day he had mastered the balance thing, we put the pedals back on and he had it sorted. he was so proud of himself and we also had a celebration & made a huge fuss! We had tried him on a scooter some time ago but that didn't work at all so now we will give it another go!
Cheers
RachaelB 7:10 p.m., 26 May