Outsourcing Teaching Your Child to Ride a Bike

I was going to post about something completely different today, but then I heard a news story on the radio about outsourcing the teaching your child to ride a bike.  I'll be honest, to me this is outrageous.  I understand that teaching a child to ride a bike can be very difficult.  I'm going through that difficulty right now with my oldest daughter.  She wants to learn, but she's also very tentative and very afraid to get on a bike with no training wheels.  Would it be easier to outsource this task to someone else who has professional experience teaching others to ride bikes?  Sure.  Is it the right thing to do?  In my opinion, no.

Teaching your child to ride a bike is a great opportunity to teach your child science in action.  How do you ride a bike without falling over?  Simple, keep your mass balanced.  Can you make sharp turn going at any speed?  No, the friction between the tires and the ground isn't large enough to keep the tires on the ground.  If you turn while going to fast the tires will slip and down you go.  I learned this the hard way as a kid and still have a small scar on the inside of my elbow as my punishment for ignoring science.  :-)

Not only is there an opportunity to teach your child science, there's also the opportunity to further bond with your child.  As one of the DJ's on the radio this morning stated, teaching your child to ride a bike is a right of passage for both the parent and child.  It's a great moment that no parent should miss, and outsourcing that task takes away that bonding opportunity.

There's an interesting article about this on the Today: Mom's Blog.  There's a quote from a mom stating that outsourcing riding your bike is the same as outsourcing swim lessons, which most of us do.  I understand her point, but teaching your child to swim is far different from teaching your child to ride a bike.  First of all, most people do not have a swimming pool and do not have the opportunity to teach their child to swim on a regular basis.  That's why public pools offer swim lessons.  Even then, whenever my family goes to a pool or goes to the beach, I'm working with my children on the skills they learned at lessons.  Teaching your child to ride a bike, on the other hand, is something that every parent can do.  Granted, you need a bike and a helmet, but aside from that the only thing you need is ground to ride on, and we all have that.  We walk on it every day!

My point to this post/rant is that it's very easy for parents to give up on the difficult things with their children and pass the task along to others.  Parenting is not an easy job and it was never advertised as an easy job.  I urge all parents to carefully consider what they choose to "outsource".  Don't pass up great opportunities to teach your child science or to bond with your child.  You never know when those opportunities will be gone.