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“I am afraid that I missed the window in teaching my child to bike.”

Parental Expectations and Realities

Recently, a mother expressed this very real feeling she had about her son’s inability to bike at a certain age. As a parent, I feel that everyday. There is a finite amount of time in the day. Almost every decision a parent makes is kind of a catastrophe waiting to happen. I want my child to bike, so I try to teach them. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t work. Either way, parents own the outcome. However, it has been my experience that parents are often blind to their successes. I try to remind parents of that when they express feelings of failure by letting them know that simply having signed your child up to a lesson proves that they are invested in the development of their child. This conscious effort to create an environment which fosters and promotes development for their child, is far more important than being good at teaching any particular thing, like riding a bike.