Almost there

Well, Firstborn almost has it! He's almost riding that bike. Here's what is working:

For the past week, I have been participating in an online conference on OGTOC, called "Teaching the Cheetah how to Hunt." You can search for OGTOC in yahoogroups.

One of the topics of conversation is why some gifted kids seem resistant to learning. Gee. I wonder why I see this as pertaining to Firstborn and the bike? In her discussion of self-determination, Aimee Yermish, the conference "speaker" defined the following three requirements for motivation:
Autonomy
Relatedness
Competence

From that discussion we went on to discuss that feeling of flow, when everything seems to be working right and you are just challenged enough in your task to keep you interest so well that you seem to lose all perception of time and self consciousness. Certainly, riding a bike can create a feeling of flow for many children. Possibly, one of the first times in their life when they will feel like they have it all together, their in control, they're enjoying themselves and they're challenged just a bit.

And one of the factors listed when describing the aspect of competence is ones feeling of self-confidence.

A thought began to brew in my head. Certainly, Firstborn has not been on this earth long enough to have collected much data to prove that he can learn. Not in his mind, because so much of his learning has been automatic learning. Even with his listening difficulties, he's still a sponge. Now he is being faced with the task of learning something that is clearly out of his domain of strength. It requires skills of proprioception and movement ideation. If it were a visual memory task, he would feel confident. If it were number manipulation, he would still feel like he could do it though his motivation would be slightly lower because he's received so much feedback that he is weak in that area. He seems painfully aware that people are weak in areas and he seems to fear that he's the weakest in all areas.

So, anyway. I decided today to concentrate less on the mechanics of riding a bike and more on the confidence. It may take him months to do this and if he doesn't believe, he will never stick with it long enough.

So we talked a while about how much more comfortable riding a bike is if you know how to do it. It may seem uncomfortable now, but that's just because he's working it out now. Evidence= the boys in the neighborhood who ride around looking like they love it.

We talked about how if he believes he can't do it, he will be right. That's the only outcome of believing in your own failure. You can be scared of failure and still come through it. But if you believe in your own failure, you leave no room for success.

We also faced up to the skinned knee thing. I admit. This is my thing. I hated skinning my knees. I am well aware that despite Firstborn's seeming klutziness (and he really isn't), he has had precious few skinned knees. I admitted to him that he will probably fall and hurt himself, but the chance of broken bones was pretty slim and our work on controlled falls would ensure that he could get through it pretty unscathed. I just had to face up to my fears and let go. Then I felt a bit guilty for protecting him so much and what developmental touchpoints will he be missing from those pristine knees. Not that I will sneak around pushing him down so he can have these experiences, but I do need to back off.

So we returned to the open parking lot and began the drills again. I was very excited to see that Firstborn remembered:

Push off hard.
Start with the push off pedal up.
Keep your supporting leg away from the down pedal so you don't get clonked in the calf.
When the bike tilts too far to the left, drop your left foot.
Pedal backward to break.

See, this is why I would never call Firstborn a klutz. He needs to have movement broken down for him the first time and he will be stiff if he is not feeling confident, but he doesn't forget a movement. I taught him controlled falls last summer and we didn't repeat them till last week, but he remembered how to apply them.

Today, I explained to him why stiff arms will lead to crashing. He needs to keep loose and steer.
I also explained how after he pushes with the push-off foot, the force will pull the bike to that side of balance. Once he puts his trailing foot on the pedal and pushes it, the bike will come back to center and then go past center a bit until he pushes the first foot again. I suggested he trust his balance for just a second more than he was comfortable trusting it.

With a force of will, that fully characterizes Firstborn when he is truly motivated to accomplish something, he powered through these ideas and within 15 minutes, he was actually moving about 6 rotations before losing balance. I still think he was getting to a point where his mind said, "wait! I'm actually doing this! I can't really be doing this! I will fall!" and then he would.

The funniest part was when we started, before I explained that he had a bit of room each side of balance that he could play with. He would push off, then find the second pedal (still a bit of a stretch for him), but then he was so certain that the bike would fall that he would slam the second foot down--but backwards--thus forcing the bike to a sudden and jarring halt. Not expecting this result, he would then think he could never do this and become more nervous. That's why I gave him the physics lecture.

More tomorrow. Maybe a video of him flying on his bike.

It's like riding a bike.

Really. This riding a bike thing is such a representation of his whole life. It was painful to watch our session today.

The good:
He seems to remember how to catch himself when the bike starts to tip.
He does remember how to pedal though I would not compare his skills even to those of a typical 5 year old on a three-wheeler.

The bad: He still keeps his supporting leg very close to the bike causing it to get bonked by the pedal when he pushes off.
He still does not use the handlebars for balance AT ALL.
His push off is very weak and not enough to get him going fast enough.
He can't seem to find the pedal with his push off foot once he gets started. This causes him to lose momentum and lose balance.
He toes out drastically causing his heel to get caught on the frame of the bike with every revolution.

20 minutes is enough to tire him out. He is very discouraged and thinks bike riding is hard and boring. I wish I could let him feel how bike riding feels when it all comes together.

Week 6

Just completed week 6 which completes the speech and language spectrum. Still not seeing much, but seeing a lot. He still talks very quietly. Almost too quietly. Even around other kids, he seems very quiet.

This is very hard to measure as I know he is also very tired from being in camp from 9-5 every day.

Tonight we had a meltdown. He spent the afternoon playing with a friend. The friend was here yesterday and they were at the other house today. He stayed for dinner. He has never had dinner at someone else's house without me. So this was a great milestone. But the day turned out to be less than he had anticipated. The friend is ADD and off his meds for the summer. Apparently he was not very nice. This was hard on Firstborn.

Then he was surprised by the fact that he got home within 5 minutes of bedtime. He decided to postpone bedtime by refusing to brush his teeth. Mom is not having that. So he cried at the top of his lungs. Once he calmed, I tried to lay out the choices again. He screamed again. He calmed again. I reiterated that no action goes without a consequence and that every minute he took putting off brushing was a minute off his bedtime tomorrow night. He screamed and brushed his teeth.

The intensity of this breakdown is much higher than any of his previous breakdowns. He is also very tired. He is a child who needs sleep. When he was three and I left the workplace, he would have tantrums like this daily until I decided to put him back on a two nap a day schedule. He would sleep 2 hours in the morning and 2-3 hours in the afternoon and still be ready for bed by 7:30 at night. But once the new schedule was started, he was so nice to be around. Too bad I can't go back to two naps a day. Maybe if I take two naps a day, I can get through.