A year ago, we bought Hallie a bike. Of course it had the traditional bell, streamers coming out of the handles and some training wheels and she loved it. She rode it round and round our neighborhood, stopping at our older neighbors to shoot the breeze.

One day I was talking with a friend and she was saying how she was getting her daughter to ride without training wheels. The thought had never crossed my mind to take them off. I just assumed she would ask to have them off when she was ready! (Of course, this is our first time with this!) So I started thinking it through…If I take off the training wheels, I’m going to have to help her every time she wants to ride the bike (which is a lot). Not sure I wanted that task. Then again, it would be fun to have her ride the bike free and clear. So we removed the training wheels – big mistake. She couldn’t touch the ground sitting on the seat, so she had a hard time getting the whole balance thing down.

Luckily a friend had a smaller bike we could borrow so Hallie set off to ride it on her own. After a week and a half, and three 20-minute sessions of working with her she was off. A little wobbly at first, on the grass, off the grass, but she was riding. You could see the sense of accomplishment in her eyes, she was having a blast.

She learned this task just days before she was getting ready for her first day of school and you better believe she was on top of the world…she was going to school and could ride her bike without training wheels. They just don’t stop growing do they?