Teach Your Child to Ride a Bike in One Hour - No Training Wheels

Here's how to teach a child to ride a bike in about one hour. Basic idea: find a gentle, grassy slope where the kid can learn how to balance the bike while going down the slope without pedaling. Learning pedaling and balancing at the same time is too much for some kids. The grass ensures a soft landing for the inevitable falls.  This works for kids at age 5 through 8, in my experience, but probably older or younger as well.

1. Make sure the bike is small enough so the kid can almost stand herself up while sitting on the bike.

2.  Get rid of training wheels -- but do make sure the child wears a properly fitted bicycle helmet.

3. Find a short, gentle, grassy slope with a large flat grassy area at the bottom with nothing nearby to crash into.

4. Let the kid coast down the hill, perhaps starting halfway up at first.  Tell her not to worry about pedaling but just get used to the idea of balancing.  Expect a few wipe outs.  Or a lot of wipe outs. That's okay.

5. Repeat step 4 for about 20 or 30 minutes using plenty of encouragements and making sure any falls are soft and harmless.

6.  Once balance and stability in coasting appears to be working, start farther up the hill.

7.  Repeat until the kid is comfortable coasting down the hill and balancing the bike.

8.  When step 7 is mastered, tell the child to start pedaling toward the bottom of the hill.

9.  In my experience (4 kids' worth), once step 8 works, the child pedals away and just keeps going.

Again, this method has never failed me and has never taken more than about one hour.  I assume it would work for younger or older people as well as long as the size of the bike is appropriate.

They make tiny, low-to-the-ground, two-wheel "bikes" for toddlers with no pedals so kids can learn the balancing part of bike riding at an early age, if you want to encourage that.

Good luck.

Boy Scouts Should End its Discrimination against Gays and Lesbians

Remarkably, the Boy Scouts of America is still debating whether or not to continue its ban against gays and lesbian scouts and scout leaders.  They are currently surveying the scout community. This is an issue that should not require a poll to figure out what's right.

Here's what I shared with BSA's national office and with the National Capitol Area Council:

I am a scout leader in Patriot District and a Wood Badge candidate. These are my comments about BSA's current discrimination against gays and lesbians.

BSA must enter the 21st Century and embrace diversity and accept gays and lesbians, as our armed services and all other significant institutions have.

BSA has a very public mission. The fact that it is a "private organization" is meaningless in the context of its key, influential role in America. Bringing diversity to your unit is required for all Wood Badge candidates. Why is that message getting buried by BSA's policies?

Consider this irony: Through its current discrimination, BSA is telling gay or lesbian leaders in our armed services that they do not have the moral fitness to serve as an assistant den leader in their own son's Cub Scout pack. Does that make sense?

BSA's discrimination against gays violates my Christian faith and my sense of honor, morality, and history as an American.

Clinging to the current policy will hurt Boy Scouts future as an enduring, significant institution in the U.S.

My father was a Boy Scout, I was a Boy Scout, my son is a Boy Scout. On behalf of all of us, please end the discrimination, which is no different than barring Jewish or African Americans from scouting.

Policy Haiku for February 20, 2013

Sequestration threat
Triggers a bipartisan
Kumbaya blamestorming moment

Doing Less with Less

Local governments -- at the city, township, county level -- are the front lines of democracy and canaries in the coal mine in many respects. Syndicated columnist Neal Peirce is one of the great chroniclers of local government issues. Another is Bill Barnes, director for emerging issues at the National League of Cities. Barnes' December post is about how local leaders have already gone through the "doing more with less" phase. Now he says, "many are figuring out how to do less with less."

Unlike the federal government, which regularly pulls budgetary tricks to gloss over problems or ignore them until they become crises, local governments have to balance budgets and deliver services that constituents depend on, day after day.  It's a lot harder for mayors or city council members or city managers to hide from the people they serve.  Or use partisan rhetoric to duck accountability or spread blame.

So local government is where you see in stark terms how things are working -- or not. Barnes says now is the time to "test local and regional systems for capacity to weather probable scenarios" that result from the continuing recession, which may drag on for years.  He notes local leaders have been in "airbag situations -- saved from devastation but temporarily stuck in place and unable to see ahead" and therefore have been focused on the "immediate and urgent."  

NLC's Center for Research and Innovation is one of the incubators of ideas and strategies for managing a way to stronger local communities and looking ahead with longer-term strategies. 

While the Washington region, inside the Beltway, is not hurting as badly as many others throughout the U.S., Congress would be wise to spend more time with local leaders to glean insights into innovation, cooperation, accountability, courage, and doing less with less.

Manage This

As a kid, I spent many years growing up about a mile or so inside the Beltway in Fairfax County, Va. before there was a Beltway. Even then, in the 60s, you could hear the roar of the road in the distance, in the evening.  Now I'm about a mile outside and my son and I often hike through the wooded parkland that abuts the Beltway. It's nice land although the velocity of the water after a storm seems to scour away most of the life in the creek.

And it's lousy with deer who venture boldly out into the yards to eat your plants. We saw a sign posted in the woods the other day that said something like, "Deer Management Area" with a beginning and ending date.  That was it, except for a tiny notice in small print at the bottom, which said for more information go to www.fairfaxcounty.gov/living/animals/wildlife/archery/archery-program.htm.  Leif read it. It was a sort of "aha" moment for him.  That's what you call the "fine print" I explained. Read the fine print.

The Roar of the Beltway

When I step outside my front door each morning, I can hear the Beltway.  It's a dull roar.  It never goes away completely.  It's like background noise -- a hum, a buzz. Not unpleasant really.  I walk down to the end of my driveway and pick up the Washington Post and the New York Times and I try to thumb through them, the national and political news anyway, with my espresso roast from Beanetics. I check Google news alerts. Forward an article, perhaps.  Then I drive east toward Washington, stopping at the water, and climbing into a tall building with a view of the Potomac and the airport.