If your child is about to start learning to ride a bike, it’s time for you to think back to when you learned to ride — and when you learned to drive. Both activities seem very different at first, but what you put into both of them is actually rather similar.
1. Building Muscle Memory
Learning to bike or drive requires you to develop muscle memory. You gradually learn by heart how far apart the gas and brake pedals in a car are, or just how much you have to turn the handlebars on a bike to make that bike go around a particular corner without crashing. Eventually, you become used to a particular bike or car and can tell when something is off, such as the stem on the handlebars not turning as easily.
2. Learning Overall Coordination
Biking and driving both require all-over body coordination, from your brain and eyes to your hands and feet. On a bike, you’re keeping your feet and ankles in a certain position to ensure they stay on the moving pedals while your legs move, while your hands have to work the brakes and gearshift to ensure pedaling isn’t too difficult. And then your legs have to slow down and speed up when you’re shifting, or when you’re braking on a foot-brake bike.
Driving requires all-over body coordination, too, even if you aren’t pedaling. Your feet and legs have to coordinate movement between the gas and brake pedals (and clutch, in some cars) when your mind realizes you need to speed up or stop. Your hands need to work the steering wheel (and gearshift knob, if you’re driving a manual transmission). Both modes of transportation make your body’s muscles move in tiny ways to keep you centered and upright without you noticing.
3. Making Judgment Calls
This last one might sound a little strange, but both learning to ride a bike and learning to drive a car involve making judgment calls regarding safety and timing. For example, when you’re on a bike and about to come up to a stop sign, you have to quickly judge how much distance you need to stop. That judgment has to take into account your speed, your current distance from the sign, how well your brakes work, whether the weather could affect your stopping, and so on.
When you drive, you face the same considerations. The vehicle differs, and the consequences of you not stopping in time certainly differ. However, the overall judgment you have to make and the way you make it remain essentially the same.
Obviously, those aren’t the only judgment calls you have to make with either mode of transportation; they’re just comparable examples. But if you think one mode of transportation requires less brainpower or mental activity than the other, you’re mistaken. When you ride a bike or drive a car, try to note how many times you have to make judgment calls about stopping, going faster, slowing down, and so on. You may find your mind is more involved in what looks like a mere physical activity than you anticipated.
Learning to ride a bike and learning to drive do have some major differences, but they also have a lot of similarities. If your child is just learning how to ride a bike, remember that they’re now learning to operate a vehicle and are learning how to deal with those same issues you may have had when you first got a bike as a kid.
