Give me your tips, lessons learned, funny stories or just solidarity in giving a kid without a fully formed brain the keys to a car.
1 Like
In Colorado as well. Get it as soon as possible. They need I think 1 year of driving and many hours. Don’t put off. Many kids today aren’t in a rush to drive, but putting it off only delays it when they want it.
Also get out and let them drive as much as possible. Make sure their comfortable. And teach them how to handle things in the snow.
I’m in with 2 of 3 driving currently. I’m better now than when I started. A couple of thoughts:
- Unless it is immediately dangerous, don’t correct them while they are driving; in my experience, there initial response is defensive, distracts them, and it is too hard to illustrate the point. I make a mental note of it and then address it with them after the fact. It seems like they are way more receptive to the feedback after the fact than during it.
- Don’t direct, too much. You’ll start by directing them a lot, but I try hard to let that drop off as they drive more.
- I’d rather them wait to long at a turn then wait too little. Both of my kids started by waiting a long time. With my first, I would say something like “you can go”. But then I thought, what does it matter if they sit at this intersection for 15 seconds longer than necessary.
ETA
- Teach them some cues that indicate they are paying attention and see what’s going on. For instance, my daughter brakes way to late for my liking. She’s gotten better about it, but I’ve also talked about getting off the accelerator when she sees she’s going to have to stop. Doing so cues me that she is aware of it, and I’m not all in her grill telling her to stop.
Matt
1 Like
My mother used to tell a story of when she was learning to drive. She was behind the wheel, with my grandfather riding shotgun.
Mom literally ran the car into a ditch. Radiator hissing steam, hood bent up, the whole smash (so to speak). Grampa’s response was, “…You’re a little far to the right, dear.”
God bless Grampa Floyd. He was one of the calmest, most mild-mannered guys I’ve ever met.
1 Like
I have two daughters (17 and 20) so I went through this in the recent past. It’s definitely a bit daunting but
First thing I did with each kid was take them to a wide open parking lot somewhere and put them behind the wheel just to get a feel for things like the gas and brake and how a car steers. Doing this in a big open space allows them to get a comfort level with how hard to hit the gas and brake and how the car responds to steering inputs without having to worry about all the other driving related stuff like staying in a lane, turn signals, traffic, etc. I started doing this with them before they got their permits so that when they actually did get their permits they would have some experience behind the wheel first. We did this at least 6 or 7 times, anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, before we moved on the next phase of driving, which was finding a place that was more similar to driving on the road, but not actually being out on public roads. There’s a couple really large cemeteries near me that are pretty good for this. There are intersections, stop signs, and pretty much no other cars to worry about, and my daughters both joked that if they screwed up the people they were likely to hit were already dead anyways. We did a handful of times right up until they got their permits and at that point we moved on to driving out in public. We started in our own neighborhood and kept to less busy areas and moved up to busier and busier areas as they got more comfortable.
One tip that someone had told me and that I took to heart was not to yell at them if they made a mistake and not to show frustration if it seemed like they were taking longer to get the hang of something than I thought they should. Be encouraging. Correct them by explaining how they could have done something differently, not just point out what they did wrong.
It can be stressful, but you’ll get through it.
1 Like
Been there, done that, and I have the t-shirt times 2, and I did it in Long Island traffic. There are no tricks. If you are good driver then you can pull it off with patients. Just have a plan for the session - what you are going to accomplish, where you are going, etc. For me it was a trip to one of the empty state park parking lots for the first behind the wheel experience. Both of them managed to drive home from the park with minor problems.
1 Like
Jeebus, even as a good driver, you end up with patients (in the hospital)? What happens when there’s a bad driver involved? 
This is good advice and I did something similar. I went as far as having him accelerate, turn and brake pretty hard to get a feel for how those things felt.
I also took him to the same parking lot in the snow. I’m not sure how much that helped. It was an all wheel drive car with snow tires and I never got there on a day when it was really slick. I may have given him a false sense of how hard it is to drive in the snow.
I am about 6 months away with my eldest and dreading it. She is all kinds of scatterbrained and ADD. On a family trip we rented one of those 4 wheel pedaling surries. She couldn’t go 30 seconds without going off the path toward a tree. I figure some time at the local go kart track and more time riding residential streets on an ebike before I put her behind the wheel.
Don’t try and teach girlfriends how to ski or teach your kids how to drive. Everyone involved is much better off if professional instruction is used. Just because you know how to do something (and likely not that well) does not mean you are equipped and able to instruct someone. Boggles my mind that something so dangerous is usually treated so casually.
2 Likes
We live in the SF Bay Area, so I made sure I spent time with them driving on freeways. Driver’s Ed in our area does not include freeway driving nor does the DMV driver’s test and it really shows in all the yahoos who have absolutely no clue how to merge, pass, and exit.
I got my boys behind the wheel as early as possible. I took them out in my truck on some mountain dirt roads sitting in my lap and let them steer before they could even reach the pedals. Then we graduated to them driving those same trails so they could learn steering, accelerating, and braking. They really enjoyed testing the suspension of my truck by aiming at every pothole and puddle they could find.
So was my Grandpa Floyd!
1 Like
This! I learned to drive a stick when I was 14 (out in the country) and then when I was 16, my dad made me drive every time we went somewhere on the interstate. My mother couldn’t drive a stick and freaked out about the interstate, so dad made me learn as soom as possible.
My kids both also went to drivers ed, but the amount of time spent behind the wheel in drivers ed is no way near enough for them to become competent drivers. I think it was 16 hours driving, 8 hours of observation, and 30 hours of classroom instruction. That’s not enough so the additional time spent driving with me was intended to supplement, not replace, the formal training.
Another advocate for stick shift. We spent the first couple of weeks with my daughter just driving in circles around a parking lot so she could figure out how to coordinate hands and feet. The parking lot had a small hill, so she could also figure out hill starts and using the parking brake.
Next step was early Sunday mornings on wide roads.
We also used time where I was driving her for her to talk about what she was seeing in terms of traffic, pedestrians, signs, etc.
By the time she was ready to tackle highways and busier roads, she was already pretty confident in her ability level.
Get a cheap stick shift, let the kid learn, then sell it for about what you paid for it!
2 Likes
That seems a sensible approach.
I should have mentioned that it’s more or less a requirement. I live in MA. In this state, you can get your learner’s permit at 16 and your license at 16 1/2 if you’ve completed a driver’s ed course. The RMV also requires that parents certify that they have spent at least 40 hours driving with their kid, although there’s no way for them to track that so it’s an honor system. If you don’t complete drivers ed you can’t get your license until 18 and your car insurance rates are significantly higher.
Interesting- my daughter has an app she used and it tracks day vs night hours. She has to get 50, 10 of which have to be at night.
She does point out the irony that they give you an app yet it’s illegal to use your phone while driving.
Offering up a couple
-
College campuses, especially during semester breaks, are a pretty good places to learn to drive. Speeds are slow enough and traffic is light enough that you’re never holding up other impatient drivers, like you would in a busy downtown. Just watch out for pedestrians. Then kid can graduate (pun intended) to busier areas to drive.
-
Different schools of thought on this which car to pass onto them - On the one hand, give the kid the oldest family beater vehicle since it’s the cheapest to (not) fix if something happens. On the other hand, it’s the newest and most inexperienced driver that could benefit the most from the car that has the best/latest safety tech if needed.
Forgot to add probably the most important one – Sign her up for the Teen Driver skills program that Tire Rack sponsors. They’re all over the country, and will cover things far beyond what you get in Driver’s Ed (very limited), and beyond what most parents can do/teach themselves. … Car control, skid pad, emergency manouevers, … stuff than should only be done on a closed setting w/appropriate instructors.
[quote=“jsivvy, post:10, topic:1284924, full:true”]
Don’t try and teach girlfriends how to ski or teach your kids how to drive. I extend that to girl friend and car, though I was not teaching she was " practising" when she did not notice someone pulling out to her right and it took out the whole right side of my car… technically it was not her fault but in the situation a more experienced driver would have stopped before hitting the car. I saw it in slow motion and because it was summer with the windows rolled down and on a major street with fast food etc. a guy on the sidewalk almost died laughing and my reaction, first “oh no” then I simply disappeared below the dash board. It was OK in the end my car was a beater and the insurance pay out was a nice bit of cash for a poor university student so all good… I also ended up selling the car to a mechanic I knew who took it into a demolition derby…