Teaching Teens to Drive
A Parent’s Guide to Helping Your Teen-ager Become a Safe Driver
When your teen gets behind the wheel, a parent is his most valuable teacher.
It can be every parent’s dream and at the same time every parent’s nightmare: Handing over the car keys to your teen-ager.
As a parent, you can make this rite of passage a safe and successful accomplishment, by being your child’s most effective driving teacher.
Prepare
- Call your local department of motor vehicles office and find out what the requirements are for your new teen driver.
- Call your insurance agent to see what coverage is needed while your child is learning to drive.
Help from Your State
- When your child gets his learner’s permit, he’ll get a booklet of driving rules and regulations. It includes invaluable driving tips and tricks you should go over extensively with your child.
Driving Schools
- Initiate your child to the road by using a pro. Professional driving schools know how to turn an inexperienced driver into one with enough experience and confidence to drive with a parent. Some states require a certain number of hours of behind-the-wheel training, so be sure to get documentation that your child has completed a driving course.
Classroom Work and School Offerings
- Many public school districts offer classroom sessions for driver’s education, often through health class curricula. Take advantage of anything your local school district offers.
- Bookwork and learning rules, regulations, laws and penalties are as important as driving experience, and your child will have to know this to pass his driver’s test.
Parental Help Off the Road
- Help your child by going through booklets and written materials with him, pointing out what you believe is important and stressing safety issues you know are vital.
Parental Help On the Road
- Let your child drive whenever you get in the car. Keep a log of how much driving time he gets and in what conditions (nighttime driving, rainy conditions, snow, heavy traffic, etc.)
- Allow your child to put in at least several hours of nighttime driving, driving in rush hour, and in different locations (highway, country roads, city streets, busy suburbs). Remember that your objective is to give him experience driving in tough situations while you’re still with him to provide guidance. Don’t take the easy way out during your instruction time.
- Be sure to tell your child any tips you have on driving in local spots – which lane to get in for certain turns, blind spots at particular intersections, common road problems, and defensive driving techniques he’ll need based on your past experience with local drivers and the mistakes they make.
- Use your time in the car with your child to point out techniques. Don’t wait until the drive is over to try to explain how to take a sharp turn, back out of a tight spot, or deal with a right-of-way situation. The lesson has more meaning if it’s taught at the actual location.
The copyright of the article Teaching Teens to Drive in Parenting Teens is owned by Diane Laney Fitzpatrick. Permission to republish Teaching Teens to Drive must be granted by the author in writing.
