Megan on 2 Wheels

Our strategy for teaching Megan to ride, largely engineered by Maura, has been two-pronged. About two years ago we got her a purple pedal bike with training wheels. For a while now she's been motoring around on that, in the backyard, on walks, and sometimes to school.

More recently we also got her a pedal-less bike (made of wood!), that you basically just coast on. These seem to be a modern innovation - I don't remember anything like that when I was a kid. She's been using that more often than the purple bike, I think because you can go a bit faster and are a bit more free in your movements.

The underlying idea is she can learn to pedal and steer on the training wheel bike, without having to concentrate on balance. She can learn to balance and steer on the coasting bike, without having to concentrate on pedaling. Then, when the time comes to ride a real bike, she will have already honed all these skills in parts and just has to put it all together.

Today we took the training wheels off the purple bike, went out to the sidewalk outside our house - and she totally put it all together. I'd say within 5-10 minutes she was riding along without me holding her up. She could go straight, balance, and (mostly) stop. She even looked both ways when going across a driveway. There were no crashes, no crying, and lots of big smiles. She did a great job - by the end she was going all the way down the sidewalk to the corner of our house. You can see her cruising in the movie below.