With apologies to Tomie dePaola and his story entitled First One foot, Then the Other...

My 13 yr old son provided us with a miracle recently. Our big guy has always had difficulty with motor skills. He mastered his little tricycle at 3 1/2 and outgrew it before the next Spring. So we moved on to the John Deere tricyle - a huge thing with big knobby tires. He loved it. Then a few years and many adjustments later, he outgrew it. We tried the bike with training wheels. It wiggled and wobbled. He hated it. Wouldn't go near it. Talk about a non-preferred activity.

A few years passed until an adult sized trike took over the garage. The joy of riding was back! We got him on a scooter with big, knobby wheels and he progressed to streaking down the hill - with the brakes on all the way! He even white-knuckled his way on a Razor scooter.

He asked for a new Scooter for his Birthday this year. A bigger one. So I surfed the web looking for an affordable scooter that would hold an adult sized boy. And found one. It was a cool scooter and it had pedals, a seat, small knobby tires and a very short chain drive. He saw it, he pedaled it and loved it! Two months later he eagerly pulled us all outside for another miracle. He had quietly pulled a ten-speed out of the shed and was pedaling that. Within two weeks he had mastered shifting gears.

WOW-who'd have thunk it??

If your child is needing that next step, go to Amazon.com and search for a scooter bike. It comes unassembled and is under $100.