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Old 02-16-09, 08:06 PM
  #17  
Luis Vivanco
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Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Burlington, Vermont
Posts: 46

Bikes: '09 Surly Big Dummy, '08 Surly LHT touring bike, '96 Fisher Mt. Tam MTB/icebike, '54 Schwinn Tiger cruiser

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Aside from the point made earlier that what you do with them will seem normal (at least for the early years), it also depends on how your friends, neighbors, and other people in your community regard bikes. (You can take this to the bank--as a cultural anthropologist I can tell you this is how cultures work everywhere )

In other words, if your little ones are regularly around others that regard bikes highly and use them often, what you do will with them will be reinforced. I see it where I live with my 7, 3.5, and three week olds (well maybe not the last one--she's too little for the burley yet!). My 7 year old is already joshing with me about how insane I am about bikes, but the fact is, everyday she is around other people who use bikes for more than just exercise and recreation, but as practical vehicles. So she has a solid sense of the importance of bikes for getting around, and for getting around with a certain sensibility (a smell the roses kind of sensibility). It makes a difference too that ours in a bike-friendly city where a bunch of us neighbors ride with our kids to school, the schools make a big deal about riding (offering prizes throughout the year), there's a strong bike advocacy group that has events throughout the year (even in winter) where kids decorate their bikes and do bike parades, etc. Each of these adds to their sense that what we are doing in our family is normal.

I totally get the teenager car thing, having grown up in California where my bike fanaticism got sidelined by a racy Fiat (not to mention the distances I wanted to travel). Which is why I'm planning on packing up the kids for a multi-year bike tour just when they get to the teenage years (just kidding, but only maybe....)
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