Biking to school

Two weeks into the school year, Tim has fallen into a very satisfying routine of riding his bike to school. Fifth grade is the first year the kids are, as I like to say, “released on their own recognizance.” In the earlier grades they have to be either on a bus or met by an adult at the end of the day; starting in fifth grade they simply walk out the door once class is dismissed. Tim likes to ride his bike the short distance into the town center, pick up a snack at Ferns Country Store using his new Ferns charge card -- which he has to earn the money to refill -- and then settle in at the library to start his homework and, though I might wish it otherwise, play a computer game or two.

I love this routine because it gives him such a sense of independence, and that’s one thing about Carlisle that has not changed since I was his age thirty years ago. In such a small town, there are so few ways for kids to develop their independence in the way city kids do, by going places on their own or making any plans at all that don’t involve adults. Back in the 1970s, when I was in fifth grade, the middle schoolers queueing up after school at the country store – which had a different name then, and no charge cards – was a daily tradition, and it still is. Tim tells me in the morning what time he’ll be home, and he’s on his honor to leave the library at the right time to make that happen. He doesn’t have a cell phone; he just has to use good judgment and keep track of the clock, like I did back in the 1970s. (And I actually think he has better judgment about snack choices than I ever did at his age.) When he gets home, he’s buoyed by the independence and invigorated by the biking, and he has also usually finished most of his homework.

My pleasure in seeing Tim ride his bike reminds me of something that came up in an article I wrote three years ago about a family who categorically decided to give up use of their car. They live in a community near Cambridge that is much more mixed-use than ours; halfway between the suburbs and the city geographically as well as infrastructurally, it has sidewalks, neighborhood schools, and public buses. So they decided that they would rely on walking, biking or public transportation, even though their two children were under the age of ten at the time.

What interested me most in the interview was when the mom, Sarah, talked about how the family dynamic had changed somewhat once they gave up the car and rode their bikes to school, lessons and playdates instead. And it wasn’t exactly a matter of physical independence: at the age of about 8, her elder child still wasn’t old enough to pedal around town by himself. She still accompanied him, on her own bike, to his various activities. But dropping him off by bike was different. Merely by giving up the role of mom-as-chauffeur, she found that things had changed. Her children didn’t seem to have quite the same perspective on her as their means of conveyance. Even when she went with them, if they were on their own bikes doing their own pedaling, it lent a sort of egalitarianism to the relationship.

I found that insight so interesting, and that, more than environmental or financial reasons, has influenced me to try to cut back on driving the kids around. Even if I’m still with them when they bike or walk – as in Holly’s case I always am – I want them to see that kids don’t need to rely on grown-ups to orchestrate every activity and plan. As the children in the article about going car-free learned very early, kids do have the power to get where they want to go. Literally, and in some ways figuratively too.

Holly learns to ride a bike!

As of today, Holly can ride a two-wheeler! After a few sessions earlier in the summer that yielded mixed results, we took her up to the paved track on Saturday, at which time she picked up the ability to stay balanced and ride in a straight line -- she just couldn't start or stop very well. Yesterday, she and I went back to the track along with Holly's friend Samantha, who is almost exactly her age and very similar to her in terms of developmental skills, and they both practiced until they were both riding nearly flawlessly.

It was such a pleasure to watch both Holly and Samantha develop these abilities literally before our eyes. On the one hand, Samantha's mom -- my friend Nancy (coincidentally, I have lots of friends named Nancy) -- and I were so proud of their intensity and their courage in persisting until they could do what they set out to do, and we're both excited at the thought of future bike rides sans the tagalong attachment we've both lugged along behind us for the past half-decade or more. But we also commented on the vicarious thrill of imagining what it must feel like to develop such a remarkable ability as riding a bike. So soon after acquiring the skill, we take it for granted. Even Tim has commented on the curious fact that he doesn't need to think about balancing on a bike; as soon as you learn, it just happens effortlessly. But remember that initial feeling, a combination of balancing and soaring? The sense of "I can't believe this is possible...and I can't believe I'm the one doing it?"

"It would be like if we suddenly developed the ability to fly," I commented to Nancy. "Doesn't it seem like it would be that same kind of thrill, that sense of liberation from the usual constraints of gravity?"

I'm so happy for Holly, but I also learned something from my part of the equation. Rick did the heavy lifting, the early biking lessons when he had to hold her up, dash behind her and catch her as she fell. I didn't get involved until she could balance on her own and really just needed help with lift-off. But what I learned during the two days I spent helping her learn to start and stop was eye-opening in its own way. I kept offering her advice: "Make sure your front tire is facing forward. Pedal fast so you pick up some momentum. Get your pedal in ready position before you start." And she kept shrieking at me, "Stop telling me what to do! Let me just do it my way!" At first I attributed this to anxiety; she was frustrated wtih how long it was taking so she needed to vent the frustration by lashing out at me. But then I started to see it as something else. Maybe she was right. Maybe she really didn't need my advice at all. Maybe my advice wasn't actually going to help her learn any faster than if she just figured it out for herself.

After all, it wouldn't take too many launches with the front tire turned at a sharp angle before you realized that the process worked better with the tire straight, and it probably wouldn't take too much trial and error before you realized that pedaling fast made balancing easier. So maybe it wasn't just the need to yell at someone; maybe Holly really wasn't benefiting from my suggestions. Maybe this was something her own body needed to figure out on its own, physically, viscerally, not through my explaining it to her. And that may be a lesson that carries through at other times too, times that I want to explain things to her and she wants to just live through them and figure it out through trial and error.

Years ago, when my niece Phoebe was five or six, I remember accompanying her and her father, my brother-in-law Bob, to the cul-de-sac behind our house so that she could try out her new in-line skates. At first, her attempts appeared to me to be disastrous. Not only was she slipping and crashing and tottering and tumbling; she yelled at her father at every possible opportunity. "This doesn't seem like it's working very well," I commented mildly to Bob, but he was wiser. "Just wait," he said. "This is exactly how Phoebe picks up every new skill. She attacks it, you think it's never going to come together for her, and she takes out her frustration by yelling at me. Then all of the sudden...." And as he said those words, we both saw Phoebe gliding toward us, then accelerating, turning, and coming to a picture-perfect stop. "Like that," Bob finished.

I'm not sure I want to always be the sacrificial lamb in this scenario. I'm not sure I'm willing to be shrieked at by Holly every time she needs to learn a new skill. But I'm still delighted that she's biking now, and I'm wiser to the fact that my long-winded explanations of what she should do were useless to her. I gave her the opportunity to try -- I pumped up her tires, strapped on her knee guards and elbow pads and brought her up to the track -- and then she ultimately figured it out on her own.