Bike Bribery

For Abe’s 3rd birthday, Mike and I got him a bike.  He has been pedaling his trike everywhere for a year, so we figured he was ready for it.  This was confirmed on our summer vacation when he rode his cousins’ bikes everywhere.

I’ll spare you the long story of how we ended up with this particular bike, but both Mike and I were quite surprised at the resistance that Abe met the bike with.  He wouldn’t get on it, wouldn’t ride it, and hardly touched it.  “I don’t want a bike… I want to bring it back…”  and on and on it went.  We tried plan A, the ignore route.  For over five weeks the bike sat in the kitchen and we just ignored it.  Every once in awhile we would ask Abe if he wanted to ride it, and every once in awhile he’d say yes.  But when it came to actually getting on the bike, whining, crying, etc.  Clearly there was some fear there, but we still have no clue what it was.  So we kept ignoring, thinking he would eventually, in his own time, when neither of us were looking, get on it and start riding it through the house.  No such luck.

Today we put into action plan B, i.e. bribery.  After Abe’s nap I told him that Daddy and I wanted to encourage (sounds much better than bribe) him to ride his bike.  How we were going to do that was that whenever he would sit on it or ride it, he would earn candy corn.  Sure there was a little whining and crying as he fought with himself over which he wanted more, the candy corn or to not ride the bike.  But it didn’t take long before the candy corn won.  It took two pieces for him to sit on it and, with the promise of five more, we took it outside and he rode it down the side walk two times (ate his candy corn)… and around the block four times… and through a good chunk of the neighborhood.  He gradually built up confidence and was quite proud as he went faster and learned how to use the brakes.  “I can do it!”  “I won’t fall over.”  “That’s so people can hear me coming!” (We got him a bell.)  “That was a big hill!”  “I’m doing very well.”  All it took was seven candy corn.