John Mulaney’s Parenting Hack for Teaching Son to Ride a Bike

Learning to ride a bike is no laughing matter.

John Mulaney shared his unorthodox method for teaching his and wife Olivia Munn’s 4-year-old son Malcolm to ride a bike.

“I’m teaching him to ride a bike currently,” he exclusively told E! News’ Will Marfuggi at the Nov. 5 premiere of Prime Video’s Madden, which is in select theaters Nov. 18, “and it is funny, because I can ride one for sure. I don’t do it often, but I can ride one. But I have no idea how to communicate to him.”

“Like, ‘I don’t know, man,'” Mulaney continued. “‘You just you kind of just stop moving your arms around.'”

So the 44-year-old, also dad to Méi, 2, with the Newsroom alum, leaned on a “hack” to get through to Malcolm, though he made sure to emphasize that he “can’t pretend” he came up with it.

“I put a pair of sweatpants,” he explained, “I hold the legs, and then the crotch of the sweatpants is around his chest into his armpits, he rides, and I’m back kind of holding him up in case he goes from side to side. But he’s actually riding it himself, so no training wheels—right to sweatpants.”