Summer

Hey oh, Dynasty Dad, here. Like that cold one after a fresh mow, just sit back and enjoy.

This week's kickoff: The Stress-Free Way To Confident Little Bikers

Dad Meme and Joke Of The Week

Dad Meme

Dad Joke

5 ants rented an apartment with another 5 ants. Now they're tenants. (Compliments of my buddy P. Welch)

The Stress-Free Way To Confident Little Bikers

Dads, here’s the simplest way to teach your kids to ride a bike confidently.

The challenge: Teaching our kids to ride a bike is often frustrating for us dads.

Even when our intentions are good.

It doesn't have to be this way.

Here is my no-pressure art of teaching your kids to ride a bike with confidence.

First, here's how learning to ride went for me as a child:

My dad, a firefighter, was more of the cool-aid man (brute force) than a patient teacher.

He took the philosophy when teaching me to ride a bike:

1/ You will thank me later

2/ I don’t care about what you “Feel”. I care about results.

My dad’s approach:

1/ Buy me a new bike.

2/ Take me to a bike path.

3/ Give me a push as I wobble down the trail.

4/ And stay at it until I learned

The problem with this:

Every time he let go I was afraid to go on my own.

Falling down hurts.

He grew impatient.

I could feel his frustration, which only added to my hesitation and fear.

I started to cry.

“Dad, I wanna go home”

His response:

“We can go home if you learn to ride your bike, or we can go home after you have fallen five times.”

The results:

Skinned knees.

Tears.

I left defeated, cycling equaled fear & pain.

I didn’t try to ride my bike again for a year.

It doesn't have to be this way.

Here is the stress-free way I taught my son to ride his pedal bike confidently.

And there are 3 simple steps:

1/ Make sure the bike fits your kid properly.

Adjust the seat so their feet sit flat on the ground.

2/ Remove the pedals from the bike.

3/ With the pedal-less bike, they can scoot around on their own. And become more confident on 2 wheels.

The 2 reasons this is better:

1/ Encourages our kids to gain confidence at their own pace.

2/ Allows the experience to be pressure free: this isn’t a zero to a hundred process, but a gradual increase in skill.

Back to my childhood...

Eventually, I did learn how to ride my bike, free from my dad’s impatience.

I’m not mad at him I get his intentions.

He saw the neighborhood kids riding and knew that I would feel excluded If I didn’t learn.

But he made something that should've been fun, super stressful.

It doesn't have to be this way.

Give your kid the tools they need to teach themselves.

Soon, they will be asking you to put the pedals back on their bikes.

This Week's Interesting Thing:

Old man strength with money.

Money skills are the Mike Tyson right uppercut to life. They impact significant things like marriage, employment, and homeownership.

Teaching our kids good habits early on can help them avoid taking one on the chin later in life.

Some experts suggest parents should start as early as five years old.

The education and message should be age appropriate. For kids five- to eight-year-olds basic concepts like the value of money and the impact of spending choices.

For older kids the topics can become more complex, including saving, spending, and investing.

And as teenagers, they can take on more responsibility, managing a small budget and understanding how spending decisions affect their financial situation.

Just like training for anything in life, the key is consistency, action, and doing it consistently.

And let them make small mistakes now, that will teach them valuable lessons so they will avoid bigger, more costly mistakes in the future.

And we must lead by example by sharing how we are working on our money behaviors and where we have fallen short.

We love the Money Ninja book and are interested in the "Spend, Save, Give” piggy banks. The money ninja teaches about the importance of separating their earned money (in mason jars or a spend-save-give piggy bank) into piles the kids will spend, money they will save and money they will give to help out someone else.

This topic is really interesting to me and I plan on researching and writing more.

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