At time of writing, my child is 5 going to 6 years old soon. With my petite stature, I can no longer carry him at the back of my bike like before (something that I am going to miss for sure). In fact, I twisted and hurt my right wrist about a month ago trying hard to find my balance on my bike when a motorbike zoomed fast past us at one of the crossings on the way home from school. It felt as though some ligaments were torn - later told by the doctor that it will take at least 8 weeks to heal. That was my call that days with my child on the bike with me were truly bygones. It is time to let go of that. But it is also time to think about biking together alongside him – an idea that makes me feel nervous about, especially now we are city dwellers, which means wide and busy streets humming with motorbikes, cars and bicycles. Not forgetting that his feet could still barely touch the ground while on his fairly new bike, at least the last time I checked, and his hands which could hardly hold on to the brakes. Watching him using the tip of his shoes to come at a screeching halt for most parts were all moments of suspense.
I have been contemplating about this for some time, trying to muster up my courage to go out biking with my son, each on our own bike. I have been observing some parents who live further away than us, doing so with much ease with their kids in the morning heading towards the school. I want to be able to do that too, not just for school purposes but also for weekend activities from time to time. Most of all, I need to learn to trust my child with his own safety. Here are the few reflections that I have, when I finally gave in to the request by my son to go out for a ride together. It is summer break after all. I could not just leave the bikes in the shed collecting dust because of my own fear and indecision, could I?
See our child as an equal being with their own free will
I know this sounds scary, more so if your child is still young and helpless while simultaneously in the process of developing their own sense of autonomy. However, this is by no means letting them decide everything on their own at their age without any guidance. It is about allowing them the chance to learn from their own experience, under proper supervision by the parents. This may mean putting aside the parental ego, which portrays itself to always know better than the child and that often translates into controlling behaviour over the child, mistaken as an act of protection. As parents, we can guide and advise without imposing upon them our expectations of what should or should not happen. Think about it this way, how frustrating can it be when a child actually understands perfectly what their parents are telling them, and since they know insufficient vocabulary to fully express it, they just want to be given the opportunity to at least demonstrate it through action. Why do we continue to suppress our child of such option when we know how that felt like to have once been denied the same at their age? All we parents have more of compared to our child is nothing but our accumulated past experiences and memories, that we can fondly share at best and not making it necessarily a blueprint that must be strictly followed. We need to allow their own experience to unfold for them at the right time.
Child’s behaviours begin to yield when we truly let go
As you can most likely imagine, I was busy telling my son to ‘stay on the right lane’, ‘watch the road’, ‘keep some distance’, ‘don’t go too fast’, ‘prepare to stop at the red light’, ‘pay attention to where you are going’, ‘signal with your hand if you need make a turn’, all of which were all valid advice, while my son was constantly reassuring me with ‘I am not going too fast’ (I still disagree), ‘I already knew that’, ‘yes I know what I am doing’, ‘I know how to do that’, ‘see, I did well’, ‘you don’t need to repeat that’ (to which my ego replied ‘that’s what moms do’). I need to recognize that that was the best I could do to impart what I know as vital, release everything else and trust that all will be well. And as we do that, the favourable outcomes begin gradually to reveal themselves one at a time. The child will sense when the opposing or dominant force from their parents softens which renders them more willing and comfortable to do what is needed. The more we attempt to nag, the stronger their defence will be that likely leads to persistent frustrations sounding like: ‘my child just never listens to me’. When we see past their forms as tiny or less matured humans, from soul to another soul, we will understand that no one really enjoys to be told incessantly on what to and what not to do. We need to get off their ways sometimes to get more of what we wish of them.
Practice what we preach
It is not always as easy and straightforward to walk the talk with our child if we adults tend to play by some exceptions that we think is appropriate for the context. When that happens, we lose the consistency for the very thing we are trying to teach our child. For instance, just as I asked of my child to ‘pay attention on the road’, I was the one busy looking back and forth giving him all kinds of instructions and ushering him to either bike in front of or next to me instead. No wonder he got confused about that! I would not be surprised if he even thought that perhaps I was the one who should ideally be ‘paying more attention on the road’ and trust him to know exactly what to do. Being the primary caretakers of our child, we are naturally their role models whose behaviours and attitudes are observed and learned from in every possible moment spent together. Our presence in the now and awareness of how every word we utter and every course of action will have subtle yet potential influence on our child, are monumental to ensure we walk our talk such that they can see how we truly mean what we say to them.
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