When a baby fish learns swimming!

✪ Wonderful feeling to see my daughter Adu learn cycling!
✪ Oh, I thought you are holding from behind! Oh yess!
✪ Small milestones but plenty of joy
✪ Importance of peer cycling buddies
✪ Great feeling to see her enjoy cycling and trekking
✪ Joy in sharing knowledge and experience
✪ Witnessing a sapling becoming a tree

Hello. My nine year old daughter Advika- Adu has just learned cycling! She has started enjoying it! I am sharing this joy with you. Before this, I had trekked many times with her and also had done double- seat rides. I had tried hard to make her learn cycling, experience it and enjoy it. I had done everything- right from lowering seat of my cycle. I had also told her about my meeting with an eight year old girl- Ravi Kaur who was cycling from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. But Adu could no more cycle when the supporting wheels were removed. Her legs would fall short to take support of the ground and she was not able to balance it! And cycling is so easy that I was finding it difficult to teach her!

 

When I had shared this with my one cyclist friend, he would tell me, oh, you are trying to make the baby fish learn swimming! This was the situation for last two years. Many times she would get fed up and tell me, you like and you do cycling. But then why I should do it? Such fun was going on. But now when she had vacation after her Class IV examinations, I thought to make another attempt. This time she could touch the ground while sitting on the cycle! But she was finding it difficult to balance the cycle. Then I told her to sit on the cycle and just push it by her legs. Then I told her to press hard the pedal. I pushed her from behind! Finally for one second she could balance the cycle. Then three seconds, then five seconds! She learned it finally! When she realized that she has pedaled and went ahead and I had taken off my hand much earlier, her joy knew no limits!

I recalled my cycling while see her ride her cycle! I had learned it when I was in Standard I or II only. Its reason is so clear. In those days, all children in the colony would automatically learn the cycling. They even did not need to “learn” it, they would automatically learn it by looking at each other. They would actually start riding a cycle somehow by falling and failing! We all would utilize our rented cycle in the given one hour time and ride as much as we could! But for Adu, absence of such peer friends was strongly felt. This could have been done just with peers and in their company. It took much time to do this way. But no worries! Now as she has learned cycling, she can enjoy much!

Once she good hold, she cycled in the parking for two days. Initially she would complain that there are so many stones and potholes on the floor! But within two days the complaint was replaced by joy and enthusiasm! Just in four days her confidence and joy grew so much that we did a small ride on the road! Two separate cycles for two of us! And then five kilometers, six kilometers and then 11 kilometer ride we did! Her joy was worth seeing! “Oh Ninu, I just cannot believe I am riding this much!” This was our shared joy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joy of sharing our experiences and knowledge like this itself gives pleasure! What an experience it has been for me to see her enjoy her ride and also enjoy her trekking! She likes trekking and she has done some small treks. She has even climbed the challenging Sinhgad fort (near Pune). And now she is able to enjoy cycling also! I have enjoyed a lot to share with her many experiences and fun- even stories from cricket and movies! All this is part of transformation of a sampling into a tree! What an experience this has been. In this journey, I know that she is different from me, many things she understand much earlier and she has unique ways of doing them. In future how much she would cycle is her own concern. But it is a great satisfaction that I was there with her to uncover the joy and fun in riding!