<p>My son started taking driver’s ed classes during holidays in California. It lasted over a period of 2 1/2 years. His first road experience with a driving company was during a rainstorm, Friday, 5 pm traffic. He came back totally discouraged. During all this time, he ran stoplights, and did the worst things. But when he took his driver’s test he was 18 and the guy who went with him for the test saw his age and had him drive around the block and back to the dmv and signed his test…</p>
<p>His big driving adventure right after getting his license was highway 5 from SFO Bay Area into downtown LA. 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. I made him stop for coffee and food every so often. Something like that. I rode shotgun the whole way. When we hit the big freeways like 10 lanes across, I navigated and held on for the ride of my life. Wow! </p>
<p>I am glad he has a bike and not a car at college. He is not a bad driver and some day will have a car to drive. But now, pedaling around is alright by me.</p>
<p>For those that don’t know it, about 120 miles north of LA, the highway climbs from a flat valley floor to something like 5,000 feet in 10 minutes. About 80 % of the cars slow way down due to the climb but the other 20% make the climb easily and don’t really slow down. So you have to pay extra attention to what’s behind you as well as the front. Definitely a test of nerves, congratulations!</p>
<p>Going agaisnt the grain here. I pushed both boys to get their permits as soon as they came of age (15). After six months of prompting, I finally dropped the oldest one in front of the bureau and waited out fron until he came out with the learner’s permit.</p>
<p>Then I hired a driving instructor. Six weeks later, son had his restricted permit. He and his younger borther put up half the money and we bought them a used car.</p>
<p>I don’t like to drive with them and I avoid it. This is more my problem. If I have to get into the car with them, I make them drive like Grammas.</p>
<p>The older boy is gone most of the year and the younger one has the car now. They both LOVE the car and the freedom it brings–as I did when I got to drive my mother’s Buick. </p>
<p>IMO, a car is a “maturity accelerant” for boys. With the car, they have the sense that they have more control over their lives. It is the first time they really feel a part of the adult community. That’s a good thing.</p>
<p>They’ve both had a parking ‘dwang’ and they have both been stopped and breathalized (passed). </p>
<p>That’s another reason I love the car. It gives a non-drinker a great excuse not to drink. If the car stays in the garage, it is a sign that plans to drink are afoot (drinking age is 18).</p>
<p>Also, early access to a car is a good start to a parent’s compartmentalization program. In those first few months, when they leave with car keys in hand, a parent has to have faith, put the absence in the “he’ll be right” basket and go on with whatever activity. </p>
<p>That’s good training for the time when they leave for parts unknown–be it college or travelling through Africa or China or whatever.</p>
<p>I was glad for my boys to get their license too (well except for the big change in our insurance bills).
They both got jobs as soon as they turned 16 and it would have be very inconvenient for H or me to have to always be “on call” to deliver or pick them up from work.
Since they started working, both have been responsible for every drop of gas that goes in their vehicles and also helping to pay for repairs. Gives them some real world experience to have to plop down $45 for gas when it took took 8 hours worth of bagging groceries to earn that money.<br>
Also like that they can drive to school and sports practices/school events and friends houses. Driving is a big deal to kids in our area(suburb,no public transportation). It’s like a rite of passage. The keys to freedom and a much expanded social life.</p>
<p>S1 loves his ride so much (spent hundreds of dollars and hours “renovating” it himself. Its a 1989 Ford!) that he refused to go to college without it. It came in very handy and he was glad to have it there.</p>
<p>Just started with 17-year-old son - thank goodness for large parking lots! He has lots of experience “driving” in computer games. I had to tell him that, in real life, if you run into the grass shoulder and trees at 120 mph, you don’t just flip over several times and keep on driving. I think he knows that intellectually. :)</p>
<p>Cheers, I am with you on how driving is like a transition in growing up and independence. Where I live, my kids were always in supervised situations because to go to anything, you have to go by car. So, I drove them everywhere until they were 16 and then whatever I took them to, had an adult present. So, they really were not on their own very much. But once they became drivers, they were on their own…while driving and when they got to their activity, etc. It was a good transition to the next step which was college when they are on their own 24/7. For my older D, this meant two full years of driving on her own before she left for college. For my second D, it didn’t quite work out that way. She was young for her grade because she entered K early and on top of that, she also graduated HS one more year early. So, she turned 16 in fall of her last year of HS. While she had had her permit one full year by then, she had to still complete the driver’s ed class which ended three months after she turned 16 to get her license. She got to drive for two months and then had the serious car crash and injuries and so didn’t drive for two months. She went away part of the summer but got about two more months of driving in total. But then she spent the first year of college in NYC, no driving but one week home all year. Now, she is REALLY on her own as she has a job out of state and has the car too. So, this is a big step for me even though she has been living on her own in NYC but that was sans car. When she lives here, she is expected to call as she gets to the destination and when she leaves it. So, she is not doing that out of state but I will likely call there tonight because I know she had the day off today and drove some place according to my husband, maybe the beach and I won’t be able to go to bed without knowing if she made it back to her house. So, now I am the one kinda in transition!</p>
<p>Check out <a href=“http://www.driversedge.com%5B/url%5D”>www.driversedge.com</a>. If they come to your city, sign up your teens to take the course. It’s free, it’s fun and it’s invaluable. Looks like they’ll be in Nashville, Sioux Falls, Detroit, Wilmington, Reno, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas and Dallas between now and Christmas.</p>
<p>They do skid pad training, panic braking exercises, ABS braking demonstrations and evasive lane change exercises. The kids sit in a car (brand new BMWs) with an instructor (who is an actual race car driver) and each kid gets a couple of turns around the course. They let the kids feel what it’s like to lose and regain control of a vehicle and I know it gave my son a LOT of confidence. </p>
<p>If you go to the website you can sign up to be notified if the tour is coming to a city near you. It’s definitely worth it.</p>
<p>We live in a major city. Very hard to drive in! Since his starting driver’s training I owe my son $30. A dollar for each time I said “my nerves can’t take it!” LOL. I just cover my eyes and try and meditate because truly, my nerves can’t take it! My husband (son’s step-dad) is a much better instructor. Also, here you have to have six hours of professional behind the wheel training. Costly but well worth it. He will get his license (if he passes the test) the day he turns 16 but I’ve noticed lots of kids putting off driving until 18.</p>
<p>Amen to the first few hours of paid driving instruction (also in Cal major city). </p>
<p>Of course, somehow I always remember the tale of flight training at Lackland during WW II. The opening statement: “Gentlemen, this is a propeller.”</p>
<p>Wow, where we live the driver’s ed class and the practice driving with instructor are free. They drive with the instructor (and another student) for 3 hours x 4 days. </p>
<p>My neighbor’s daughter finally got her license last Aug. one week before sch. started. She had her Permit for well over a year but parents had not allowed her to get her license because they didn’t think she was ready (mom was a nervous wreck).
So they let her get her license before sch. starts so she can get a school parking sticker (our sch. has more kids than parking spaces so getting a spot can be akin to winning the lottery for a 16 yr. old). </p>
<p>On the first day of school daughter takes off, shortly thereafter I see Mom’s van leave. She calls me later to say she actually followed the D to school and right into the student parking lot because she thought D might need help finding her parking space (the spaces are numbered and it’s not that big) and getting the car pulled in!!
My S howled with disbelief over this. Said it would be better to WALK 10 miles over hot coals to school than have your Mom follow you into the parking lot and watch as you park the car (with all your friends watching too) on the first day of school. Talk about an independence buster (not to mention total humiliation. Mom had not told D she was going to do this. She just showed up).
Sometimes (most times really) you have to just let them go and say a prayer.</p>
<p>Packmom, my kids would kill me if I had done that. I am cautious and nervous but even I would not do that. What I did when they first drove to school, I asked them to call as they got into the building for my peace of mind. After a while, I didn’t require that any longer though required it for other drives that were longer than to school. </p>
<p>I have to agree that there comes a point where you have to let them grow up and say a prayer. I am at that point. I even let my 18 year old drive 6000 miles to Alaska. Now, my 17 year old is living in another state for a summer job and has a car. I’m nervous, yeah. She drove 100 miles roundtrip yesterday to visit with a friend in that state, the farthest she has ever driven alone. I did do one trial run with me in the car when we dropped her at her summer job. She said she got a little lost yesterday but the family she was visiting told her what to do. I did call her last night for my peace of mind to know she got back to her house. But I can’t keep 'em chained to a leash forever and there has to be a letting go. My kids go to college out of state now and I don’t know their comings and goings like I did when they were here and had to account for where they were at all times. I have learned to adjust. My 19 year old is flying alone to Paris and staying there by herself in a few days. I’ve come a long way, LOL.</p>
<p>Oh PackMom, I have to print that out for my son who will be going for his permit in 2 weeks. No matter how bad I am - there is some other Mom who is worse!</p>
<p>He doesn’t realize what all he is in for, though, his sister is a careful, cautious driver who had to be encouraged to do highway driving, etc. But otherwise she is a bit of a daredevil - tried rock climbing, loves roller coasters, learned to ski, etc. While he is truly afraid of heights, and cautious in new situations, he is much more anxious to start driving than she was - it will be interesting to see which side of his personality comes through.</p>
<p>I will offer another slant on encouraging reluctant drivers - I would never push/shove a reluctant driver, especially a child who has to drive in heavy freeway traffic or at high speeds, like LA or Atlanta, but I wouldn’t let them off the hook either. I think it is much better for them to get driving experience and confidence while they are young and “flexible”. My Mom, who is now 74, has had her life severely curtailed for the last almost 20 years by her limited driving ability. She learned as a young adult, when she finished college, married and had to get a job. To my knowledge, she has never driven on an interstate or freeway, she has never driven in a town larger than 15000 people. After my Dad had a stroke, and then passed away 10 years later, her life has become progressively more limited, not so much because of her health or his difficulties, but because she can’t drive herself outside of a quite confined area. Anytime my daughter became reluctant, I would let her vent her fears, address them, but usually end with - you don’t want to be as limited as your grandmother is - you probably can’t be these days, unless you live in a city with super public transport - you have to be a good driver, period.</p>
<p>I can really relate to this thread as well. I grew up in NYC and left for college at an age when I wasn’t even eligible for a permit yet. As a result, I never learned how to drive until I was in my early twenties, thanks to an encouraging driving teacher! Even then, I lived in major cities where a car wasn’t needed and so I didn’t really drive on on regular basis until after I got married, moved to the suburbs and got a job that required it. </p>
<p>So, when it came time to teach my kids how to drive, I let my fingers do the walking (or driving in this case) and signed them up with a driving school for the first six sessions. In our area everyone does this, and there’s even a reduction on insurance that comes along with it, so embarrassment was not a factor. After they got that experience, I got much braver and would go out with them. I think the kids slightly prefer H to me in this area, though, in that of the two of us he is not typically the one clutching the arm rest for dear life!</p>
<p>As far as those 50 hours of driving practice, we were sticklers for those. I know a lot of parents who just sign off on them out of convenience. It used to be that in many states, you were eligible for taking the driving test anytime after obtaining a permit. The graduated licenses of today have saved many lives. Regardless of the law, parents need to make their own judgments as far as when to allow a child to get the senior license. I know several people who have intentionally delayed this, feeling that their child was just not ready yet, and others who have limited driving in other ways (hours, # passengers etc. )even after the kids get senior licenses. Anyway, now that D has her permit, we’re doing it all over again! </p>
<p>Side note: Wow, Susan, I give you all the credit in the world for having gone through that horrible experience and being able to go on and let your children become the independent adults they needed to be. Kudos to you for that. It couldn’t have been easy!</p>
<p>Driving with my daughter when she was learning was the most terrifying thing in the world. We had a large vehicle at the time, which I thought would be nice and safe. However, she couldn’t judge her road position well, and mailboxes were going by within an inch of my passenger side mirror. With teeth gritted, I tried to calmly say, “You’re a little too far to the right…” and then, louder, “GET OVER MORE TO THE LEFT!!” Turns out once my patient husband taught her how to drive the stick-shift Saab, she was in her element and did fine.
Now- WILD CHILD… This should make all of you feel better. We didn’t have to teach him, it turned out. He taught himself by sneaking our cars out in the middle of the night as well as going out with friends who did the same thing. He was quite a good driver before we knew what was going on. (yes, we had an alarm system- he knew how to defeat it with magnets…) He had too much confidence, and managed to wreck two cars before he got to spend a year thinking things over away from home and life as he knew it.</p>
<p>Here’s one for you…
My older S had 4 wrecks between age 16 and 18. All were fairly minor. Nobody was injured or anything. I was amazed at H’s calm demeanor through the whole thing…turns out we didn’t always know the whole story.<br>
Wreck #3 happened while stopped at a stoplight. S and his gf were following a group of kids in another car to a nearby town that S was not super familiar with (it was at night too). The other car goes thru the stoplight but light changes and S and girlfriend have to stop. Other car disappears down the road.<br>
This is his story…
S tells us that his cell phone rang and it was the other kids calling to give directions but he dropped phone in the floor while getting it out of his pants pocket. So as he is reaching down to pick up phone, oooops his foot slides off the brake and rolls forward into the Lincoln Navigator in front of them. It barely grazed the bumper of the Lincoln (S was in Honda) but we/he still had to pay a repair bill.</p>
<p>A year and a half later…we find out (not from S) that his foot did indeed slide off the brake but not because he was reaching for cell phone but because he was KISSING the GF!!!</p>
<p>Cangel, my D has learned to trust that I will not throw her into situations that she can’t handle. Otoh, I don’t let her stay in her comfort zone. The result is that her comfort zone for driving is constantly expanding. Part of my mantra is, "You never know what kinds of driving conditions you will encounter so you need to learn to deal with everything, including driving when you’re not feeling well or tired. driving through construction zones that appear out of nowhere, etc.</p>
<p>Occasionally I’ll even ask sneaky questions, like “Why aren’t you turning?” and the answer is “Because it isn’t safe to do so.”</p>
<p>I may have D drive down to the theater in Orange County tomorrow. There will be four of us in the car but she needs the freeway experience. But I do the drive back at night…that’s adding one thing too many in her current condition, imo.</p>
<p>Upon the suggestion of a friend, I took my daughter to a race car driving school. They have a new driver program which teaches them road etiquette, emergency maneuvers, and driving under hazardous conditions. They are able to place the car into a skid and teach the student to handle it. By the end of the day, she was driving a Dodge Viper, which was a little unnerving for me to watch. I was afraid she wouldn’t be able to go back to her Camry!</p>
<p>These programs are a little pricey, but if they avoid just one accident, they are obviously well worth it. I will definitely do it again with D2. You do need to already have a license to be able to attend. We went to a major race track that’s just three hours from our home, but similar classes are offered throughout the country.</p>
<p>TheDad, I can only imagine what it would be like to have a teen driving in the OC!!! Atlanta is plenty crazy. Your plan is very similar to what we are doing. DD still doesn’t drive much at night, except on routes that she is very familiar with. She has eased back into driving, after being at school for 9 months. I was pleased that she felt comfortable driving on the interstate, through the tunnel to a mall about 20 miles away (moderate traffic to us, NOTHING by your standards) after getting home from college. The goals for the summer are time for night driving and driving some to less familiar places.</p>
<p>People are funny though, she is my “smart” Ivy League child, and she has absolutely NO sense of direction - she couldn’t find her way out of a paper sack. She also, we learned, was totally unobservant as a child riding in a car growing up. When she had been driving about a year, and had to deliver her brother to a couple of activities and drive herself to an early morning community service for NHS, she had to pull off and call for directions 2-3 times. One of these spots was a location that she had been driven past once or twice a month all her life - had no idea where we were trying to send her! Her bro, though, he gives me driving instructions at not quite 15, and he’s usually right.</p>