No more Training wheels...

As often happens in a house where there are four boys running around the youngest learns to do things a little bit sooner than others. This is, of course, because by this time their parents have learned all the tricks...

Don't believe me...

OK, it is because they have big brothers to look up to...

Probably a little more likely...

However, in the case of Seth and his training wheels there may be another explanation... It started early this summer... Seth would be out riding his bike and it would fall over. We would help him up and the same thing would happen. After a couple of times of falling, we would have to bend the training wheel back in place... It seems that after years of being used (these training wheels have been passed down from one bike to another) they had gotten a little weaker.... As the summer progressed we would be out taking a bike ride and the training wheels would bend or slip off of the support and over Seth would fall. As we began to inspect the training wheels further we realized how worn out they really were.

The options came down to... Get new training wheels or teach Seth to ride without them. So we took them off and off he went. It appears that he had been learning through his many falls, not to rely on the training too much anyway. I actually think the presence of training wheels was causing him to fall more because once they were off he stopped falling. Now he is zooming around with his brothers. We still have to help him get the bike started but he is able to steer, ride and stop along with us.