SWEET MOTHER OF A HORNLESS ONE-EYED BLUE UNICORN, I NEVER THOUGHT THIS WOULD HAPPEN.
And ... exhale.
Finally.
This child, she who takes perfectionism to all never before seen heights, has finally, FINALLY figured out this whole riding a bike without training wheels thing.
It only took her two years.
That's two years of being absolutely capable physically, but tripping over her own mental roadblocks every time she tried. For two years the kid has alternated between refusing to try, refusing to let anyone help her, yelling at everyone for not helping her, screaming bloody murder because she wanted to try but not right then or there or how, and did I mention that she didn't want help but you better help her because OMG.
Really.
The very fist time she seriously put her mind to trying, I fell into the trap. She screamed and yelled and demanded help/no help/go away/where are you, back and forth and on and on. I screamed back.
You know, I should know by now that never works. Sometimes I like to try anyway. Just in case. So I can feel really stupid afterwards.
ANYWAY.
The overall theme of the refusing to learn to just ride the freakin' bike has been "I can't." Alexis screamed, yelled, whispered, and sobbed through those words SO MANY TIMES.
Once it occurred to me that screaming back at her just made things worse, I started to reply to her "I can't" with one simple word -- YET.
Alexis would say, "I can't.
I would calmly say, "Yet. Repeat it. You can't YET."
And I would make her repeat it. Over and over and over to the point that I'm now quite certain that some day the kid will write a paper on all of the ways she hates the word "Yet." It's probably the word that ruined her childhood, but I don't care. I have no patience for when people hit the self-destruct button. "I can't" is an instantly annoying little phrase full of self-destruction, self-pity, and laziness.
You can't YET, people. Today might not be the day, but that doesn't mean tomorrow won't be.
But today was the day. Today was the day that Alexis stopped feeling embarrassed about being the last human on earth to learn how to ride a bike (her words). Today was the day that Alexis stopped telling every adult in her life, "I don't like it when I need help." Today was the day that Alexis shut her trap, put her feet on those pedals, and then rode all around the block.
And now begins the phase when I tell her "You can't," as in "You can't just go riding your bike without telling me where you are going to be."
Yet.