Learning to Ride, or Learning to be a Dad?

It was a few months after our son Elias’s 5^th birthday.  I was summoned outside to perform another thing off of the continuous list of husband tasks.  Elias had been riding the bike we had bought for Katherine, who was now ten years of age.  We purposely invested a lot of money in her bike so that all of our kids could eventually ride it.  Elias would be the third child to commandeer it, and with the exception of a little rust, the bike was in fine shape. 

The Schwinn Gremlin

Tina and Elias had called me outside to tighten up the training wheels.  They were wobbling significantly.  I retrieved an adjustable wrench from the back of my truck.  But upon inspecting the wheels, realized that they were just plain worn out.  The bearings had disintegrated.  I would not be able to tighten them at all. 

I suggested what seemed to me to be the obvious solution - removing the training wheels altogether.  Tina was not thrilled with the idea.  “If I’m going to be the one chasing after Elias every day while he learns to ride, then those wheels need to stay on”, she said.  I thought it was an unnecessary comment on my wife’s part, yet also entirely based in truth.  She would actually be the one to put in most of the long hours of helping Elias learn to ride, as this would occur while I was working.

I made a quick decision.  I would take the wheels off, and do my best to bear the burden of helping my son ride his bike, starting immediately.  What a father I was, thinking that teaching Elias to ride was some sort of chore.  Not the proudest moment in my fatherhood. 

Of course, Elias was very excited about learning to ride his bike.  Apparently one of the training wheels was really loose, and barely touched the ground.  Elias informed me that he had already learned to ride on the two big wheels and one little wheel.  So he was already half way there in his mind.

I had already taught our two girls to ride. Strike that.  I think I taught Katherine.  I got Sarah started, and Tina took over, spending hours helping her in the afternoons (thus her reservations about taking Elias’s training wheels off). 

November 2005

I approached the teaching of bike riding very methodically.  I typically tried to explain to the children how to stay on the bike.  I told them to turn the front wheel in the direction the bike was leaning.  I told them that leaning in the opposite direction of a falling bike would serve no purpose at all, other than hastening their fall.  After the classroom work, I would put them at the high end of our relatively flat back yard, and run along after them holding the seat.  I could usually tell how much they were balancing on their own, and could judge when to let them go.

Elias listened attentively, and we started off on our first run.  To my great surprise, on that first attempt, I could tell that Elias was balancing quite well on his own.  But in the name of safety, I held on to his seat during the second run.  On the third attempt, I let go.  Elias rode unassisted to the other end of the yard.  We did that 3 or 4 times.  Then came the hard part - teaching him to get started by himself.  I showed him where to place the pedals for that initial push off.  I went through the motions with him, and pointed out what he was doing wrong.  This process had taken the longest to learn for the girls.  But by about the third try, Elias was a bike rider, needing no assistance from anyone.

He asked me about 10 times why mommy had said it would take him a long time to learn to ride his bike.  He never seemed to doubt that he could do it, especially since he could already ride on three wheels.  Did he identify that as his mother’s lack of faith in him?  I doubt it.  And thank goodness, I doubt he recognized the larger offense to his person, his father’s lack of noticing the maturing of his son.

It seemed to have turned out to be a triumphant day as a father.  Elias learned to ride.  Mommy didn’t have to spend hours in the afternoons chasing him down the street.  Daddy’s judgment about the timing of taking the training wheels off turned out to be perfect.

Ah, not so.  As a matter of fact, I couldn’t take the credit for anything here.  Elias was practically capable of riding on his own before I took the wheels off.  Instead of a great job on my part of teaching him to ride, in all actuality, I was a day late in teaching my son to ride because I was too busy to notice.

The Lord seems to know just what it takes to re-direct me when I get off track.  He uses that which speaks the loudest to me, that which tugs at my heart the strongest.  In many cases, that voice is my family.   It’s a good thing He placed me in the midst of it, because in orchestrating the lives of our little tribe, He lays out a straight path that even I can follow.

I was reminded of some valuable lessons that day.  I may think everything is up to me, but some things are going to happen whether I participate or not. The fact that my five year old was one step ahead of me was proof of that.   If I’m not careful, I can get so preoccupied with my own selfish ambitions that I will miss the best of life that is going on right before my eyes.  But if I’ll just take the time to be there, I get the great privilege of participating in the stuff that makes life worth living. 

Fortunately for me, The Lord is always at work on my heart, and He is faithful to use incidents like this to reveal to me exactly where I stand.  In this particular case, I was standing way too far back.

It is the story of our lives.  If we will just be sensitive to it, He will speak in a clear voice, gently showing us where our hearts are, and making the path clear when we manage to get off track.  And in the end, we may even see that His path is what brings us the greatest joy anyway.  Thank God for little boys who just want to ride their bikes.

(Note.  Elias just celebrated his 11th birthday.) 
 

©Brent A.Timmons 2011