(Scooting came easily, bike riding not so much.)
My daughter was born nearly three weeks before her due date.
We were all shocked and a bit ill-prepared. A few pieces of furniture hadn’t been built yet and I didn’t have a hospital bag picked out, let alone packed.
Still, there’s no stopping a baby from coming out when she is ready… and it’s hard to shove her back in when you’re not. My daughter arrived kicking and screaming and we welcomed her with open arms.
Interestingly, though, despite her early arrival, she hasn’t hit some critical milestones before her peers.
At seven years old she has yet to lose a tooth. A fact that she bemoans every.single.day. It’s worse now since her five-year-old cousin just lost his front tooth.
“I’LL NEVER LOSE A TOOTH!”
The blood-curdling war cry rattles my bones every morning and every night as my kid scrubs her teeth hoping that the brush’s bristles will dislodge pieces of her gum and her tooth will magically pop out, and she can finally cash in like the rest of her peers, some of whom have been toothless since Kindergarten.
In addition to dealing with the tooth drama, much of the summer was spent mastering the finer points of riding a bike, minus the training wheels.
Did you know that some children achieve bike riding success from as early as 2.5 years old?
Or so says my daughter’s pediatrician who got an earful this summer when she asked my child how she had been spending her time off from school.
By the way, who tells a self conscious 7-year-old that kids’ more than twice as young as her are whizzes on two wheels?
After a summer (make that, nearly three summers) spent practicing for at least an hour each day, my daughter is now an official big kid bike rider. The entire experience was a bit perplexing to me since she is an incredible athlete. She has no problem with coordination or balance; however, I later learned that what kept her from shedding the training wheels sooner was pure fear. She was deathly afraid of falling anywhere besides grass and getting the same case of road rash as our four-year-old neighbor.
According to the pediatrician, kids can be experts at steering and pedaling, plus have exceptional depth-perception, but unless they have confidence in their abilities it may take them much longer to ride off into the sunset than their gutsier, but less coordinated classmates.
Is your kid ahead of the curve when it comes to reaching childhood milestones?
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