A few years ago, I read a very interesting report and spoke with a researcher at the University of Riverside in California about how teaching autistic, slow learning or down syndrome children was much easier if they were taught a new skill like learning. to ride a bike. The reasoning goes something like this; If you teach them to use a different part of their brain, and riding a bike requires movement skills, balance skills, and all sorts of things, then you’re activating those other parts of the brain that aren’t used much, and you ‘help them grow, prosper and make new connections.
Okay, let’s say you have an autistic child and you are teaching him at home. Or they are going through proper education in the public school system, but realize they need to do a little more. Perhaps the best thing you can do is teach them to ride their bikes, first with training wheels, obviously, because you don’t want them to fall and hurt themselves, and obviously you’ll want them to wear a helmet as well. Still, learning to ride a bike is as fruitful as learning to work with avatars on a computer.
What do you recommend? I recommend getting a bike with a wide seat and something low to the ground. This way they have very little distance to fall and injure themselves, and they will enjoy the process. As they get better, you can remove the training wheels and then maybe lift the seat, putting the training wheels back on for a period of time, until they tell you they don’t want them anymore, because it slows them down. and it’s not that much fun.
Yes, it might make sense to run alongside them while they learn, and you won’t believe how much fun they’ll have while doing this. It is a new skill and it is fun to ride a bike, and they will enjoy it and learn these skills quickly. Best of all, it will help them in almost everything else they do, you will notice a change in personality and a faster uptake of information during learning.
They will also notice the difference in school during their regular appropriate education. That’s what all the surveys and research suggest. Frankly, it works, so you should give it a try. Consider all of this and think about it.