Anyone else can't ride a bike/swim?

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I can't ride a bike and I threw swimming in there because it took me forever to learn how to swim. As a bonus-I also have poor hand writing.

I probably can't ride a bike. I've only ever done it as a kid when I was "taught" by my parents. Never really rode it either. Haven't touched a bike since. Swimming I'm okay at. Not the greatest, but I can get across a pool. Can't tread water though.

I can't ride a bike and for swimming at best I can do a weak dog paddle. When I was a kid and trying to learn I couldn't balance even with training wheels and when I had swimming lessons they wouldn't let me use a nose plug so I had to drop out.

I can ride a bike as long as I don't have to slow down or change direction.

I can swim okay, but I don't like getting my hair wet, and I don't think I'd be able to swim for land if I was on a boat that sunk or anything.

Learning to swim is pretty mandatory here, and so is riding a bike, since riding one the most common way of transportation here.

I think the average distance a high school kid here has to travel by bike daily is about 10km / 6.21 miles (to school + back home) -edit-

I can only swim short distances, and never never handle riding a bike, no matter how hard I tried, as a child, or teen, I couldn't keep my balance, and couldn't pedal fast enough to get it going.

It's odd, because I have no balance problems while walking, but I can't keep a bike up.

interesting.

Brings back some painful memories from the period when you make that epic transition from "three wheelers" to "two wheelers" that I and my peers would talk about when I was around 8.

I was terrified of getting on a two wheeler. And mastering it was difficult for me compared to all the other kids.

But I recall my mom taking me to the back lot of grocery story parking lot and making damn sure I mastered a two wheeler in one intense coaching session, and it worked. I was a normal bike rider after that day.

Swimming was hard. Couldnt take lessons. But gradually taught myself to dog paddle-and then over the years to breaststroke and then to crawl like a normal swimmer- and finnally to swim under water for short lengths.

With bicycling it was neurological thing.

With swimming its hard to say. I think that my nose had a sensitivity to chlorine that made me phobic about getting water in my nose. Swimming in lakes was less scary than in public pools because the water didnt bother me as much.

I can't do either! The bike stems from the fact that I just never cared about riding a bike, plus the fact that I have terrible balance/coordination. Not being able to swim stems from my sensory issues. I loathe water and being wet. I also loathe the smell of chlorine- it makes me gag. My parents enrolled me in swimming lessons when I was 4, but I dropped out because I hated getting my face wet. I still hate it. I haven't been in a pool since age 13, and I don't plan on ever going in one again.

I can swim. Not very well, but I still can.
I was taught when I was 11, but swimming was boring so I dropped out just after I had learned how to swim.

I was never able to ride a bike, even with training wheels it was too difficult for me, also I wasn't interested so I gave up.
BTW, I'm trying to learn how to drive a car, I don't need to ride a bike if I can drive a car.

I can ride a bike but I always had and still have issues with swimming, despite the fact that swimming used to be my favourite thing ever as a child. I've always had problems with my ears and sinuses which had made me become fearful of getting my head under the water. Then one day I nearly drowned in a swimming-pool because I had got out of my depth and fell under the water and got stuck. Luckily my cousin was with me, but the water was too deep for her to help me out so she quickly got somebody to help me, then the life guard come along. If I hadn't of been saved when I did, I would've drowned and died. From then on I just stuck to shallow parts of the pool where the water comes no higher than my shoulders.

I haven't been swimming in a while though.

I was always fine with a typical metal childrens tricycle but when it came to the 2 wheeler-with training wheels-I could even keep it up. So my dad got rid of the training wheels cause they were no help and I rode the bike around the little cul-de-sac perfectly but that was because I was leaning and then when my leaning was no longer of use I fell. I tried several times before that and fell too. I was never able to keep the bike up anyway lol.

I was always a scooter girl, but after an incident where my head hit the street because I hit a rock and my helmet wasn't secure I never rode it again. I loved my little chariot I had. It was already balanced on it's own. It was perfect for me. I miss it lol.

I saw a three wheeled bike at a yard sale that I could have rode but it was too expensive, I'd have no place to keep it, and I'm not sure where I would have rode it. It seemed a little wide for the road and I wouldn't want to ride in the road next to cars anyways.

I can ride a bike. In fact it was my main physical activity as a kid. Actually that's pretty much what I did day in and day out in the summer. I don't recall if I struggled to learn or not. Swimming has always been difficult for me. I really like the water, especially beaches. I just stick to my comfort level with it. I float, doggy paddle, etc. When I try to actually swim though my lack of co-ordination gets the best of me and I have to stop before I get to the point where I'm just flailing around.

I have trouble with all sports. Being a male it's quite frustrating. For example my girlfriends Dad and family love to play this ring tossing game. It's sort of like horseshoes, but you have to toss them into one of three holes. The further the hole the more points you earn. Since my co-ordination is bad I hate playing the game. It's too bad my girlfriends Dad seems to use it as a tool just to size people up and dominate them since he's been playing it his whole life and almost always wins. He's one of those sore winners sore loser types.

They also have a fascination with wii bowling. I totally sucked at that, but I would sit there and watch how they played and I found a certain way to position the ball and swing a certain way which really increased the likelihood of getting a strike so I just kept doing that one thing and got really good at it. As soon as my girlfriends Dad saw that I kept getting strikes he wouldn't play the game anymore while I was there. He's got a real hard on for that ring tossing game now though.

I decided that since I'm an adult If I don't want to play something I don't have to be pressured into it, so last time I just said I don't care for the game and didn't want to play, then I went on my phone and browsed websites. I knew it looked rude, but I picked that up from regular people, since I see them pulling that stuff all the time and they don't seem to give a s**t that they do. It actually worked! I don't really mind that I came off like a dick cause I can't even count how many times I've been on the receiving end of that families rudeness.

My writing is very bad too. It looks like how a small child would write.

Just discussed this thread with my parents and younger sister ( all are diagnosed in the spectrum), who I met for lunch today, and we believe that this may rather be a cultural difference, rather than it being an indicator for bad motor skills in autism.

I don't know how for instance swimming lessons are introduced in the US, and if it is seen as mandatory to teach your children to swim, or if this differs for each state, would love if some of you could shed some light on that, because that is quite interesting to know.

I know that for instance in Israel where my older sister lives with her children swimming and cycling are more considered as a sport, like for instance you would have your child play soccer, rather than it being a vital survival skill to teach your kids when you raise them.

In the Netherlands we have a system of grades in swimming going from A to C in conventional lessons and going from D and beyond when you want to learn about rescuing people in the water, not to be confused with grading systems that see A as the highest level, in swimming in the Netherlands A is the lowest level op skill, and combined with B seen as basic training, C is often optional.

Because our country has such a unique bond with water ( being for a great part below sea-level and all ), the way that we look at delayed motor skills when diagnosing autism may very well differ here.

The same goes for cycling here, and because we see bicycles as the primary means to travel short distances, it is once again a vital survival skill to teach your children at a young age, and a cycling diploma combined with a cycling exam, is part of the educational system around the age of 12 (in co-op with the governmental agency on traffic safety) .

I would love to hear how these things work in other country's and how you learned these skills.

It baffles me that your country has a bicycling diploma. I've never heard of that.

In canada, basically your parents, gaurdians, older siblings, family teach you to ride a bike. It's not anything that's enforced. It's more like a typical rite of passage for most children.

Swimming for the most part is the same. Except in gym class, provided the school has a pool or easy access to one, there might be a few times were some basic swimming lessons are taught, but that is about it.