Those pedal-less bikes are great for small kids as they find their balance a lot quicker and easier when they can run along the ground, then learn to start drifting as they slowly find their balance, and then when they're reliably drifting without wobbling you can stick the pedals on (that thing did come with pedals right?) and all they have to do is start pedalling.
Due to lack of funds (to get a bike) and motivation the boys didn't actually learn how to ride bikes til later than most kids would and that was how they learned. Took eldest a day because he insisted on trying to go straight to pedalling, youngest did the running along the ground thing til he found his balance and then hit the pedals and it took him somewhere between half an hour to an hour (could have been more or less as they'd been running around outside for at least that long when the friend who taught youngest to ride excitedly called us out to look).
Middle child was somewwhere between 7 and 9 when she taught herself to ride a bike and I remember watching her running and drifting laps around the house before she worked out the pedals.
I think it's better than training wheels anyway XD
Ahh I used to jump down flights of stairs on skates too. I'm guessing your elbows and knees are also pretty scarred? :D
With the grandparent thing I'm pretty sure they're overcompensating for something. Either they remember growing up in poverty and go over the top making sure their precious grandbabies want for absolutely nothing at all ever, or perhaps harbour regrets about not being able to give their own children the lifestyle they wanted due to lack of resources in that earlier phase in their lives so now try to contribute/give it to their grandkids.
if I ever have grandkids I can totally see me doing the latter >_>
I only hang out with a tiny subset of specific people and also different countries so no idea if it's a social norm or not, all I know is that the company I keep generally think participation awards are dumb so I can't see any of them appreciating buying an expensive gift just from recovering from illness. Even major surgery recoveries would probably get a card and a bunch of flowers or balloons, guess we're a heartless bunch XD
Glad small is enjoying her bike anyway :D hope you have backup plans for her birthday, getting sniped is rather annoying XD
Nope - No chain at all :D She does have a bike already but struggles with it even with training wheels as it is too hard for her to pedal and there is no flat ground around.
I once scraped an elbow to the bone... shudders.
They are and it might be partly the poverty thing, but I think that mostly it is because they have four other grandkids from their other daughter and they have been able to be there a lot through their lives (they are now aged 10-22ish) while they had more energy to spend with them. I think they realise they won't have the same opportunity with smallsteps so want to make up for it somehow.
Flowers!? ;D
I have no idea what to get her now.
D: oh ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew EW.
You're right, chocolate is much better than flowers XD
Does she have a cute helmet to go with the bike?
Curiously, I believe I learned the trick about how to ride a bike and keep balance when very young through a dream. I kinda remember of trying to ride a bike for first time just the next day after that dream and everything went well as expected. I can almost swear I never tried to ride a bike before that dream ever.
I think that's one of the most epic things I've ever heard of a brain managing O_O
Do you pick up stuff through dreams or otherwise at a ridiculously fast pace (aka to you everyone else seems a bit slow) now as well? :D
Well, actually I think that experience was way more simple. Probably as a sub product of my eidetic memory. I suspect that dream were just accumulated subconscious images of observing in detail how others used to ride a bike. And my very logic mind apparently deducted what was the key and true trick of how to get on top of the bike and then keep the balance once you started pedaling after that first impulse.
Fortunately, my intuition was correct and that trick was all I needed to learn to ride a bike immediately. :)
I would share with you now what was that trick. But my lawyer and business advisor here says that I shouldn't share publicly that info yet, until I have the trick patented first. Hahahaha