Ready, Set, Go! (How Anjali learned to ride her bicycle)

Hello everyone! I hope everyone is staying safe and having a good time during this holiday season. During the lockdown, our family has been consistently guiding Anjali on bike rides on a nearly daily basis. This effort, led mostly by my mother, has taken the last few months, and we’ve finally taught Anjali how to ride a bicycle without any assistance and training wheels! Let’s take a look back at the process of reaching this point.

In the earlier half of the year, we were trying to find ways for Anjali to remain active and safe, as highlighted in my Pandemic Precautions blog post from that time, since lockdown had just been put in place in our town during that time of the year. My mother started having Anjali ride a small bicycle that was previously unused for many years. The biggest challenge at that time was for Anjali to familiarize herself with the format of a bicycle, become comfortable sitting in a seat, and not be scared of the speed at which she was travelling. It took many days for my mother to train Anjali to simply sit on a bicycle. Once that goal was hit, she started bringing Anjali to the sidewalks and started teaching her how to pedal. This was the biggest hurdle at that time, since it was difficult to make Anjali understand that the bicycle would only move if she pedals on both sides of the bicycle, and not just on one pedal. Eventually, Anjali had the confidence to start pedalling and she started riding a few laps of our street with training wheels, with one of us walking beside her at the same time.  

By this point, Anjali became comfortable with completing multiple laps with training wheels. Breaking Anjali out of this comfort zone and teaching her to ride the bicycle without training wheels became our next challenge. Once we took off the training wheels from her bicycle, we had to once again spend multiple days to get her to simply sit on the bicycle and not be afraid of the lack of training wheels. Eventually she learned to ride without the training wheels, as long as someone was holding her from the side or her shoulder. In reality, this assistance didn’t help her balance or ride the bicycle. We simply had to do it in order to make her feel safe and confident. However, on a specific day my mom subtly removed her hand from Anjali’s shoulder while she was riding, and Anjali didn’t notice and continued riding! We’d done it! Anjali could now ride a bicycle without any help. From this point onwards, Anjali only became more confident, and eventually we bought a brand new bicycle for her. Now Anjali goes on two bike rides nearly every day! 

Something that I hope readers take away from this story is the simple fact that patience and persistence are needed in order to teach any new skill to a special needs child, which is a message that I shared in my Little Einsteins blog post as well. It took months of hard work and daily efforts to teach Anjali how to ride her bicycle. However, the result was worth it, since Anjali now has a form of exercise that she enjoys doing on a consistent basis!