Looking back, I find this incredible. I can remember considering my daughter at sixteen, a rather diminutive person at the time, whose head, it seemed to me, rose barely high enough above her shoulders to clear the dashboard of our minivan. The thought of her getting a license at this juncture seemed ill-advised, to put it lightly. And then I realized that I was like most of my friends: former overanxious sixteen-year-olds who had become fuddy-duddy dads with no stomach for seeing our kids jumping behind the wheel as fast as we had.
I'll admit that different families have different approaches to this issue. In busy households where both parents and kids have jobs, getting kids their licenses quickly may be considered essential. But it's the following mathematical question that had my attention:
"One-point-five-ton car + my kid = trouble."
Here's how I handled the driving predicament.
First of all, I told the kids that if they wanted to learn to drive, it was up to them to go online and figure out the process. If they were old enough to operate a car, I reasoned, they were old enough to figure out how to prepare for it. Once they had their permits, I told them that I was available to begin on-road instruction any time they were, but they had to work out their own availability first, and approach me when they wanted a lesson.
Secretly, I was counting on a little teenaged procrastination to delay things, and my plan worked beautifully. What we quickly learned is that driving lessons were not nearly as important as extra-curricular activities and playtime with friends. It wasn't until my daughter was past age seventeen that it became a priority, and as it turns out, she didn't actually get her license until she was about eighteen. My son, once he started dating, got on the ball a little quicker, but also didn't actually get his license until after his seventeenth birthday. Mission accomplished!
I have to admit to you that my wife was not a co-conspirator. She would've preferred the kids getting licensed sooner, especially when the hassle of getting them to summer jobs cropped-up, and I fully admit the inconvenience of this. But in the meantime, we pocketed a lot of spare change by not having to pay to insure sixteen-year-old drivers, and I counted with relief each month that went by without any chance of my kids having accidents. These were stolen, happy days, in my mind. Most of my accidents came sooner than later in my driving experience, and it was my hunch then as it is now that older, more mature kids, make generally more capable drivers.
Every family has a decision to make in terms of actual instruction. We opted against a formal on-road driving school, largely because of the inconvenience of having to get our busy kids to a regular lesson. I had been taught by my dad, and I had confidence in being able to pass along the favor, so that's the way we went. I began with lessons in the parking lot behind a local high school, often on Sundays when there was little traffic (besides other parents giving lessons). Eventually, we switched to a local cemetery, and its simulated road experience, with stop signs and the occasional oncoming car. Next, we shifted to our neighborhood's streets, which are pretty uncomplicated, and worked our way up to four-lane highways, and Interstates. I even made one of them drive briefly on the Schuylkill Expressway, if you can believe that. We worked at their own pace, with lessons spread out over many months. We learned three-point turns, and parallel parking (which is harder to teach than it sounds), and I made sure they had some lessons out in the rain, too.
All the while, I tried to stress positive reinforcement and gentle teaching techniques, but it's a stressful undertaking, and I don't know that my kids would tell you that it was always enjoyable. Our insurance company helped out, by providing a DVD on safe driving practices for new drivers, and a log that we filled out detailing the trips we had taken, whether we achieved our goals, and whether there were any problems. Not being in a rush to complete the training was a real key to success, I think.
In the end, both kids passed their road test on the first try. Collectively, they've had fewer fender benders than I had in my first few years of driving, and I'm hoping it stays that way. Skipping that first eligible year in so busy and urban an environment, I feel, very likely improved their record.
Meanwhile, drivers.com offers this free downloadable pamphlet on the subject:
