This weekend just gone by was a chance for us all to stay home and recoup after a few little sickness things struck us.
A1 was hit with tonsilitus (another day off today with it also) and K had a hit of car sickness just before he entered OT on friday afternoon.
So Saturday morning came rolled around and I declared the day a Pyjama day. I cancelled all plans for the day and we settled in for a day at home. By the afternoon the children had destroyed the house as only three children could and the oldest and youngest were hankering for fresh air. So out they went to the backyard, taking their bikes with them.
I sat in the bedroom, doing paperwork and happened to peer out the window to discover K on his bike, struggling to ride it as it really was too little for him. He had received a new bike two christmases ago from his grandparents but had been far too scared to try to ride it as it did not have training wheels. One thing that I learnt a long time ago with K is that when it comes to the big things in life he will not do them until he is really ready to. He has a tendency (as do many on the spectrum) to turn little things into giantantic scary as heck things, which once he has decided that that is the category they live in, are incredibly hard to reverse or convince him otherwise of. Riding a bike without training wheels was one of those things.
He wanted to desperately wanted to as all his friends did and he missed out of riding with them because he refused to ride with training wheels due to embarassment (another thing about my K is that he HATES being different! Not just normal hates but as in, "THE WHOLE WORLD IS GOING TO GET HIM AND IT WILL BE DREADFUL AND EVERYONE WILL LOOK AT HIM AND THAT IS THE WORST THING THAT CAN EVER EVER HAPPEN AND WILL RESULT IN DEATH" kind of hate....the thought of standing out in a negative way results in massive meltdowns!. What he was really afraid of was the inevitable fallings off that were going to occur when he was learning to ride without training wheels. He was petrified of falling and getting hurt.
As I watched him out the window I decided to give it another try, to offer to teach him to ride his new bike, knowing the least that could go wrong through asking was him saying no and the most that could go wrong is that the thought of it would trigger a meltdown. I knocked on the window and called him up to the other side and made the offer. He looked at me for a moment and then replied, "Yeh, ok" .
I don't think I have ever jumped up as quickly as I did at that moment! We grabbed his bike and headed to the backyard.
I've learnt many things through parenting my boy and the biggest is not to bother sugar coating things. I will always be found out and the sugar coating will cause more trouble than the event itself that I tried to sugar coat. Honesty really is the best policy for him and so I told him the truth from the start. "K, you are going to fall off your bike. Infact I think you will fall off your bike about 534 times today before you are able to ride it all by yourself without training wheels! But you will fall on the grass and the grass is soft and you will be ok. I have fallen off my bike many times, infact one time when I was younger I had a really bad accident where I scraped off the skin on my knees and arms and cried a lot. But I still ride today don't I? (he nods and smiles) the point is to never give up. When you fall off just get up and go again and again until you can do it with confidence." .
Another thing I need to tell you is that everything that I say to him, ESPECIALLY WHEN ENCOURAGING HIM TO DO SOMETHING HE IS APPREHENSIVE OF is always laced with humour and I spend most of the time laughing. I find if I can keep the whole thing jolly then if he is in the right mood then he will also take things a little lighter and not as seriously (serious leads to failure feelings which lead to meltdowns and defeatess feelings and never trying again). I could sense that humour was going to work for him today as he was smiling as he mounted the bike.
The first circuit of the yard I held on to the front and the back of the bike. We talked about the maths of weight ratio when riding etc and he eventually got the hang of balancing the bike straight. Soon I had moved my hand to just holding the back of his seat and then it happened...he fell off. I partly caught him and I laughed the loudest laugh I ever had in my life, hands holding his armpits and holding him slightly off the grass while one leg was caught beneath the bike. My innards were tied in a knot of prayer just hoping that he would take the fall well. Those nano-seconds between fall and reaction seemed to last forever until finally.....he smiled and laughed and got back on the bike. PHEW! Every time he fell I laughed and counted the falls and reminded him that he would fall 543 times before he learnt to ride.
But thankfully he proved me wrong. K managed to fall off his bike eleven times in total and 1.5 hours after starting to learn to ride his bike he was riding it all by himself! Infact he was so confident that we walked to the concrete bike/ walking path close by and off he zoomed away from us! No training wheels! No Assistance to start of stop and NO FALLING OFF! :D
In one afternoon K had learnt to ride his bike! and the smile of success on his face was waging a war of size with the smile of pride on mine!
What a monumentous achievement! :D
Well Done K!
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