Christmas day arrived and she opened up the box and was all excited to see her new, pink bike. However, I explained to her that her bike was different in that it didn’t have pedals nor training wheels (where we live, no one has these bikes yet). She was a real trooper about it. She let me put on her helmet and she did her best to walk around with the bike, explaining to onlookers that it had no pedals.

A few days of this and I started to worry that she would give up. So I invented a little game – run over daddy’s foot. I would walk in front of her and she would have to move quickly enough to run over my foot with the front tire. This helped a little. So then I turned to YouTube and showed her videos of other kids riding the bike.

A few days later, a bunch of kids in our apartment complex were playing, many of them with bikes with training wheels. My little girl participated a litte more, walking around with her bike. Suddenly, she said: “look, dad!”, took a few steps and then lifted both feet off the ground and coasted. I was in shock! She repeated this about a dozen times but then got tired of it. So, I was happy with the progress but still unsure if this would work out.

The next day, we went to our parking lot and she simply took off. She did not stop running and coasting for a whole hour. The only time she took a rest was to stop and spontaneously shout that she loves her bike! Since then, she rides the thing almost every day and totally loves it.