Madeline Did It!

After much persuading, and very little results, I finally convinced Madeline that she needed to learn how to ride her bike. She has been feeling a little frustrated about it lately because all her friends can ride a bike, and her little brother Mitchell can too....but has she wanted to try? NO! So, I finally decided (after seeing her feel sad about not being able to ride around the neighborhood with her friends), that learning how to ride a bike is not an option (like I had decided earlier). So, I told Madeline that learning how to ride a bike is just like reading, sometimes we don't want to learn to do it, but we have to. It is just one of those life skills that everyone needs to know. She cried, whined, etc..... but I really felt like it was the best thing for her. So, I took her out on the basketball court today, got on my handy dandy rollerblades, and I acted like her training wheels. She wasn't too happy about it, but we worked on it. Then, she saw me biff it on my rollerblades, and laughed her guts out, now we were having fun. So, we tried again, and laughed as she was dragging me around. Finally, she let me let go of her, and yep, she can do it. I fear she has inherited some traits from her mother, but she thinks she should be perfect at it, even though she just learned. Oh well, hopefully, we can get past that. But, I am so proud of her, it only took her about 30 minutes to figure it out. Pretty great! She was also pretty brilliant at starting by herself, she thought she was a failure, but she got it on her second try. I am so happy for her, and I hope we can get her out biking again on Monday. I am hopeful that these little accomplishments every now and then, will give her the confidence to keep trying new things.