Water bottles come in handy...

I went biking with my son tonight. He has a very cool 24" 21 speed mountain bike, and I have a very cool 26" 21 speed mountain bike. He got his for his 8th birthday back in April, and I just got mine (a surprise from my hubby...he ordered it by "cashing" in his points from his credit card). We donned our helmets, packed our water bottles and were off.

It's funny (in the peculiar) way for me to spend 1-on-1 time with him in a setting where he is learning. He is a perfectionist (which I can relate to) and is still very emotionally immature. So, when he crashes on his bike he either goes into a verbal rant about how stupid he is or how stupid the bike is. The last time we went biking he did this so many times that it really turned the whole biking experience into a big negative event. It also made me sad as his mom to see him suffer from similar expectations of himself that I did as a kid. I mean really now, how can we expect to just know how to do something if we haven't ever done it before, or how can we be perfect if we haven't had much practice?

There are only 6 months out of the year here where you can do any kind of physical activity outside, and we live on a busy street, and I am an overprotective mom (there, I have admitted it) so I don't let him go off biking by himself yet...all that to say is he hasn't had the same freedom I did when I was 8 to practice his bike riding to perfection.

Tonight before we started I told him no negative talk and no complaining while we were biking. On his first wipe out he started to and I reminded him of the zero negative rule and he stopped right away. On his next wipe out (which was a good one, skidding into the rocks and embedding them into his left knee and hand) he just sat there and grimaced while we brushed the rocks off and watched the little beads of blood forming. I had a small towel and he washed his wounds with water from his water bottle and got back on his bike and road like the wind. Cutting out the negative talk did a lot of good for his confidence tonight.

By the time we got back home we were drenched in sweat, tired, and happy. It was a nice outing for both of us.

Happy trails.