No more training wheels?

Now that the littlest child has her first real bike, her cries of "I wanna ride my bike" echo through the house every evening and weekend. As such, we've been heading out around the block much more often again (after seemingly taking all of last summer off). But of course now Jake is big enough that he shouldn't need training wheels at all, but watching him ride, he still relies on them. I raised them up, but he would just drop the bike onto one wheel or the other and go down the street -- no concerns for balance (or the noise!) and just merrily relying on the extra wheel.

So we decided that was enough of that and he should be going without training wheels. He's taken to swimming like a little fish (piano lessons too) because he wants to do it. And these past 7 years with him have shown me that whenever he's ready to do something, he just does it. If he's not ready, it's a lot of yelling and pouting and crying and a general uphill battle until we give up, and he decides a month later that he's ready for whatever it was. This is how taking off the training wheels is going. He's afraid to fall, but won't try in the grass because it's too hard to pedal. When you're walking next to him, he just leans against you. I was convinced there was a problem with his bike until I got on it and pedaled around a bit (it's fine). The boy just leans side to side.

After an hour of explaining how the pedals go around in circles and you can't just push downwards, but need to make them go around, and also that nobody can balance on a bike while it's standing still; that it's easier the faster you go, we finally got out on the street. He was so worried about staying near the edge (as is the regular rule when going around the block) that he kept running up into the grass or else panic braking as he'd drift into the street. It wasn't a busy evening, so I convinced him to ignore those rules for now, that I'll watch for cars. Finally he did get going with me jogging along side. I still had to rebalance him several times while going, but at the top level he's finally getting it. He still needs help starting, and stopping, and turning, and balancing. But at least he was out there on two wheels with no support!

I expect he'll progress quickly from here - but it's all up to him.