Jeremy is 6 years old and we just recently taught him how to ride a bike without training wheels. I honestly thought that it would take him a few weeks to get the hang of it but after only an hour or so he was riding like a champ up and down our dead end street. He was so proud of himself, and so were his dad and I! He rode his bike for about 3 hours until it finally started to get dark outside. The next day the moment he got home from school he was ready to go again and quickly got on his bike without any problems. He did fall a few times and got a few minor scratches but nothing major.
Since he was doing so well I decided after a few days to take him up to the school park where the kids go to ride their bikes. There is a huge flat concrete blacktop where the kids can ride bikes, play basketball or whatever. At this point I hadn’t really thought about a helmet (I know, I know) but after I saw him going so fast I told him he had to park the bike for the day and we would go to Wal-mart to get him a bike helmet and I would bring him back.
The next day we went to the store and I let him pick out his helmet, I was afraid that he wouldn’t want to wear one but he found a really “cool” one that he really liked and even wanted to wear it on the way home from the store. When we got to the park he was ready to start riding, I felt so much better knowing that if he fell off the bike at least his head would be OK. Little did I know that I would be thanking God that I bought that helmet in only a matter of minutes.
Jeremy was riding his bike as usual but for some reason he started to go really fast and couldn’t get his brakes to work fast enough and he flipped right off of the bike and hit not only his arm and leg but the side of his head. He laid there for a few seconds and started to say how bad that hurt. My heart just sank especially when I saw him trying his hardest not to cry even though I know how bad it did hurt him.
I am so thankful that I got him that helmet because god only knows how badly he could have been hurt had he not had it one on. He did manage to scrape the side of his bead underneath where the helmet was. I can’t stress to you enough how much of a wake-up call this is for us and Jeremy now knows not to even touch his bike without a helmet on. even if he is in the drive way he has to have it on at all times. It took Jeremy about an hour to recoup after the big crash but it didn’t stop him from getting back on his bike. He was pretty excited about going to school the next day to show all of his friends his big injury from the bike crash…Boys!