Dear Addie,
“It’s as easy as riding a bike.”
A phrase you are sure to hear a time or two (or more) in your life, but let me let you in on a little secret - I’m pretty sure whoever came up with this 7 word phrase of wisdom never had to teach someone with special needs challenged in gross motor skills how to actually ride a bike. They surely never would’ve uttered such nonsense if they had. Fact!
Learning to ride a bike - a rite of passage for most in childhood, but for people with autism this can be anything but easy, and drag on well into their teenage and adulthood years. Sadly, for some, riding a bike is actually a challenge that is never achieved. Everyone is different my love, and people with different abilities have different challenges - some which are lifelong. That’s life my dear.
You see Addie, just about everything we do in life requires a great deal of our senses working hand in hand together. For most on this autism journey, the struggle is real when it comes to their vestibular senses (which is actually located in our inner ear and is responsible for determining where our head and body are in relation to the ground - otherwise responsible for balance) and proprioceptive senses (or the way our limbs move around - like being able to walk, kick a ball or touch your nose with your eyes closed. You totally just touched your nose didn’t you?!) Addie if these things aren’t working properly then it’s safe to say riding a bike is probably going to be significantly harder to learn.
Like just about anything on this journey, there’s an opinion on how to do just about everything. This is where I like to remind people that it’s a spectrum disorder and there is no simple black and white answer for anything. Some would say - riding a bike, that’s easy, start with training wheels. Others would say - let them learn by falling. Ahhhhhh what do I do?!! Decisions, decisions.
Well training wheels from our experience aren’t exactly the greatest for BIG kids like you who are learning to ride (unless you happen to find one of those amazing adult-sized tricycles) and the “let them fall” approach could significantly backfire for kids like you that have a high pain tolerance who could fall and end up seriously hurting themselves causing more harm than Good.
One might say - surely you would notice if something was that wrong when your child fell. Well let’s just say you had a “slight” limp for a few days when you were 3 that ended up being a dislocated hip! Ouch! I still have no idea how it even happened, and really felt like mom of the year when all that went down. Oye.
With more years under our belt now, we came to realize this was just a different aspect of parenting that we were going to have to adjust to - high pain tolerance combined with challenged gross motor skills. Check & check!
So here we are. Nine years old and not riding a bike - yet.
As an outsider looking in when you’re walking and running, you look somewhat rigid yet sloppy and uncoordinated - but you achieve the end result of getting where you need to be. My guess would have me thinking the last thing someone would suggest would be “hey let’s put her on a bike and see how that looks!”
Um no thanks.
But here’s the thing Addie, you have actually proven to have great sense of balance in other things. You can swing way too high without hanging on, never falling off, and let’s not forget your love for climbing on anything like you’re Spiderman scaling a skyscraper (the higher the better) just to get that birds eye view, all while giving mama a mild heart attack!
The problem seems to lie in the lack of control in your gate when walking or running - it’s not exactly what I would call even. So, trying to add a smooth, alternating pushing circulating motion of your feet that biking requires - not exactly easy.
But...
Monkey see, monkey do.
A few years ago, we bought daddy a Peloton bike for Christmas. Now Peloton has recently taken a lot of flak for a commercial of a man giving his physically fit wife a bike for Christmas. Here’s the deal Addie, daddy (in my opinion) didn’t need to lose weight. People exercise for a number of different reasons and it’s seriously just flat out really good for your overall health. Even lowering your risk of many diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis and more. Sounds pretty positive right?!?! Well it doesn’t stop there, it also has great benefits for your mental health, aiding in managing stress and anxiety from our crazy busy lives. Hey, we know a thing or two about crazy busy Addie. So, Merry Christmas Daddy - here’s your bike.
Good news, he loved it!
Keeping him accountable he placed it in front of his desk in his home office and that was a good move, because he uses it all the time! His office isn’t exactly magazine picture perfect, but we don’t live in a magazine Addie, we live in our house and we do what works.
Remember monkey see, monkey do? Well here’s the deal, daddy will often get up early and ride finishing his class as the rest of us are getting up and moving. He wears headphones so we don’t actually hear the instructor or music motivating his wellness class for the day. What we do hear however is daddy breathing heavy and the bike wheels spinning - not loud, just swift like he’s in the Tour de France!
It’s not uncommon for you to be found standing outside his office door just watching. Taking it all in. So much so that you now climb up on the bike and just start breathing heavy when daddy is gone. It’s really quite funny Addie.
Over this past weekend you repeatedly kept climbing up on the bike. That’s not exactly safe so we kept getting you down and ushering you out of the office.
Before too long, you were back again, sitting up there, breathing heavy.
Then a light bulb went off for daddy.
At OT (home away from home) they had started using a hand bike to teach you how to pedal. But while the pedaling was progressing, the positioning was still a bit off in the “seated on the floor” position. Side note: while I might be 30 years older than you, we wear the same shoe size and I just happen to have a pair of cycling shoes for this bike. Daddy was going to get you on his bike!
Daddy asked you if you wanted to ride the bike and without skipping a beat you said “yeah!” Now that is your go to response for everything so we weren’t totally sure you understood, but he told you to go get socks and you took off like Usain Bolt!
Back you came with socks and almost giddy as if you knew what was happening.
Monkey was gonna do!
Daddy lowered the seat and carefully strapped your feet into the bike. With a little help from dad to get started you started pushing the pedals. The great thing here is your feet are strapped in, so you can’t flail them out or lift up, it forced the fluid motion you’ve been working so hard to get at therapy.
Once he felt comfortable you weren’t going to jump off, he turned the screen on to a leisurely outdoor ride...your face lit up like a Christmas tree! If there’s one thing you love more than anything - well besides your pink squares (pink starburst) is being outside!
Mark it Addie you were pushing in a fluid motion and loving every second of it!
Once again predictably unpredictable. Who knew a gift we bought for daddy would have had such an impact on you?! I’m pretty sure Peloton probably didn’t anticipate a 9-year-old with autism and gross motor challenges finding such joy and much needed skills training with their product - but here we are killing it!
Addie we are SO proud of you and we know that we’ll have you on an outdoor bike this year, I can feel it! But until then, enjoy the ride baby girl!
Love,
Mom
Comments