Just curious.
I had to run along side until they got the idea.
I never did figure out how the average Joe that can’t do that teaches their kid.
Art–this will be our little joke.
Maybe we should have our own song, too?
My parents didn’t teach me when I was learning, my friends with manual transmission cars did. I can’t imagine how stressful it would have been to have my mom or dad sitting next to me telling me how to do it. Parents teaching kids how to drive seems like a recipe for disaster or a least a lot of yelling, hurt feelings and high blood pressure.
I am glad my copy shows that the thread started out as ride a bike before you edited it, or I would surely believe I had lost it.
In a really big and really empty parking lot would be a good start.
I actually taught myself how to drive a stick. I bought a car that had a stick in it and I had the guy drive me home. Then, I took my car and dropped him back off at his place. I took my new car into an empty parking lot and drove around for about 45 minutes. Then, I took it out around campus for about another 30 minutes and I think I figured it out by then. I drove a 1990 Accord which is pretty damn easy to drive. Now, I drive a 2002 Outback and it’s much harder to drive. I kind of figured out how to change gears just by watching other people and by practicing, kind of like how I practice swimming at my desk at work, and I picked it up pretty quickly.
I learned on:
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An EZ-Go golf car - I worked for the park service doing maintenance, so it was our transpartation around the park. It had gears but no clutch.
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My ‘semi-automatic’ 1970 VW bug. Again, gears but no clutch.
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I owned a motorcycle in 1985-86 - I had to learn gears/clutch concept, but the efforts were not translateable to cars.
HOWEVER, I didn’t really do well with a stick until 1999 when I bought my brand-new manual Honda CRV. I couldn’t do the gears/clutch correctly. It was toughest on hills, of course.
HOW I GOT OVER IT:
I had one (1) long car ride in %$^%$%^$ traffic on I-95 between Wilmington, Delaware, and my home south of Baltimore, MD. It was a 4-hr trip to take the 1.5-hr ride. All of the clutching REALLY taught me about easing into the skills. It was terrible and a wonderful help.
Only experience works. This can’t be forced. I am an excellent manual driver now - in fact, many men say what a great driver I am - despite being a woman 
Well I’ll tell you how I learned.
I started off with a tractor in a large field and I was just told simple instructions and then sent out to figure it out. Then I had a job where I drove a Chevy C-40? 1-ton pick-up truck around. I was sent out on back country roads to figure out how it drove. I drove it for the next 7 years. Actually the only thing I haven’t driven much is standard cars. But it can’t be all that hard.
E
17 y/o daughter drives a 2001 Jeep Wrangler 5spd. Let her learn to drive mainly on an automatic, and she took her driving test in that car. We drove in parking lots, then around Forest Park (StL), then on roads. Lots of stalls and frustration, but if she wanted to drive to school and practice, she new she had to learn. Eventually she got it down (and actually is better at it than her mother). IMO, it’s a good skill for kids to learn.
My dad took me out to the farm and made me learn on our '56 International Harvester pickup. Five on the column. Once I mastered that, 4 on the floor was a piece of cake.
clm
empty parking lot, even better if it has a hill so they learn not to roll back.
I taught my cousin. LARGE, empty parking lots after hours or wide country roads makes for a less stressful experience. Also a vehicle with not a lot of horsepower and a forgiving clutch helps alot.
I forgot, maybe that means i wasn’t scarred by the process? I did have to learn though with a 1951 Mercury with the shifter on the column and no power steering.
Have someone else teach them on dirt roads , easier on the car / tires .
My sister had a brown fastback I called " The brown Seal " the first few months it was " erp -erp -erp " when she let the clutch out.
I tried to teach my now ex-wife how to drive stick - maybe the ex part tells you something. Somethings I found useful. teach the feel of the engagement point first. So ease the clutch out until you feel/hear the engine start to stumble a bit. Push back in so not to stall. Repeat many times. Start them moving doing the above and applying a small amount of gas with the emergency brake on (much like people use if they are on a steep hill and worried about rollback). Graduate to short start and stops without the emergency brake. They never leave first gear. Start adding up and down shifts on your command Try to get them used to shifting by ear, rather than watching a tach. I never cared for people fixating on the dash while hurtling forward.
My father used to put a full 1 gallon jug of water, open, on the transmission tunnel (back in the day when all you could get was RWD) - and you had to be able to shift up and down the gears without spilling anything before you got on the road. You also hd to be able to shift without using the clutch - again, before the days of strong synchros on the tranny. The hardest exercise he had me do what simulate a brake failure, so you had to use your emergency brake. Now this was the day when they were only on a pedal on the far left of the footwell - so you had to reach with your left hand and pull the emergency brake release (so you would modulate the emergency brake), brake with your left foot, steer with your right hand, and push the clutch in with your right foot.
My question now is how on earth do you find an large empty parking lot any more? Sunday shopping didn’t exist when I was growing up, so mall parking lots were clear.
When I was in High School/College I took a job valet parking. I had no idea how to drive a manual when I started, which was cutting into my tips pretty bad, and preventing me from parking/driving the top end cars (read: bigger tips). So one night some sucker drove up in a pretty old Honda Accord and I spent awhile teaching myself on his car (after he was out of sight, of course), going by what I saw other people do. Eventually I got the hang of it, enough to park cars anyways.
I think the best is when I stalled out a brand new Ferrari Spyder in front of the owner. Oops.
honestly, my mom is the one that “taught” me, and i had to learn quickly…it’s never good to have a scared woman in the car with a teenager that’s flying down the road trying to learn to drive. my ears have not recovered from her screaming.
my girlfriend learned when she test drove her VW; she said the salesman was so patient. (can you imagine? lol)
I taught my daughter last year since she was inheriting my car which was a manual. She took a while to get the hang of it but she did eventually master it without wrecking the clutch first and even ended up taking her driver’s test in the stick.
We did the basic learning in several sessions in a big empty parking lot. The key as someone else pointed out is getting them to have a feel for the engagement point and learning how to work the right and left feet in a coordinated manner. I had her start out by just doing whatever it took to get going, even if she laid down some rubber than we gradually worked on getting smoother. The one drill I had her do that really seemed to help was having her get the car moving from a dead stop without using the gas at all. You need a very delicate clutch foot to do that. It also seemed to help a bit when I actually showed her a picture of a clutch and explained to her what was going on when she pushed the clutch pedal. Never underestimate a kid’s ability to be completely oblivious to how a car actually works and there are a few things about driving that are easier to master if you have a bit of understanding of the mechanics involved.
One thing I found is that after driving a stick daily for over 20 years, it had become so automatic for me that I had to really slow down and think about what was going before I could fully articulate to her what to do. “Just put it in 1st and go” was not cutting it.
I can guarantee it was not in my dad’s shiny black sports car.