I’m now on to teaching my second child to drive. Here are some thoughts I’ve accumulated over the time that might be of some assistance to you novice parent instructors out there:
Review the car mechanics
Your child should obviously know the gas pedal from the brake, but don’t forget all the other knobs and switches that we know by heart but your child doesn’t. Gear shift, turn signals, headlights, bright lights, windshield wipers/fluid, parking brake, hazard lights…make sure to review all these features and how to activate them. As an advanced topic, I show my child how to halfway hold the turn signal arm up or down–thus, engaging the turn signal but not locking the arm in place, which can be handy for short-duration signaling like changing lanes.
Your safety radar
I try to get my kids to imagine they’re detectives or air traffic controllers. They need to be looking all around them, looking for new threats, obstacles, and other information appearing on their radars; they should be looking for clues to let them know how these objects might cause safety concerns. Is a given car in the vicinity driving erratically, not using turn signals, or otherwise providing evidence of potential danger? Add that car to your radar and keep an eye in it–and some distance. Are there children nearby that have the potential of running in front of you? Add them to your radar and take caution.
The first lesson: the parking lot
It’s probably a no-brainer, but my first lesson with the kids is in a large, unpopulated parking lot. In fact, the first several lessons will be in said parking lot. I have them drive in circles, clockwise and counter-clockwise. Several lessons in, I will start having them drive in reverse–maybe even doing a full circle or two in reverse. Of course, I also have the kids practice parking: both nose-first and rear-first. In every lesson, I insist we pretend that the parking lot is full and my young driver is not allowed to hit any imaginary car.
Residential Driving
Lazy suburbs are ideal starting points for getting your child on a real road. Hopefully, your chosen suburb has limited cars parked on the side of the roads. Initially, you may want to target early mornings or evenings to limit pedestrian traffic, as well. One alternative to the suburb is to practice on the access roads of a medium-sized cemetery.
U.S. Routes and State Highways
Once my child seems comfortable driving on the suburbs and local roads, we graduate to the nearby U.S. route. U.S. routes are a fantastic resource for beginner drivers. They traverse a variety of driving conditions: small town driving at 25-35 mph, mid-town driving at 40-45 mph, and even highway driving at 60+ mph. State routes have stop sign intersections, stoplights, railroad crossings, and multi-lane roadways. They’re also great to log lots of drive-time hours. Often, the kid and I will get up early on a Saturday or Sunday, drive two hours out then turn around and come back home.
Interstate Highway Driving
Interstate highway driving is almost like a final exam for my kids. Things get real on the highways. Obviously, the less traffic the better when starting out on a highway, so early mornings and even the weekday gaps between rush hours seem to work well. Here’s one technique I heard of recently that I may incorporate in my future lessons: drive to a convenient beltway, then proceed to take the exit. From the exit, work your way over to the closest entrance ramp to get right back on the beltway. Rinse and repeat at every exit until you’ve made your way around the entire highway. That’s sure to train your child up on highway exits and entrances.
Nighttime Driving
Repeat all the above, but this time, at night.
Odds and Ends
Don’t forget some of these other aspects of driving:
- Gassing up the car (or charging, as the case may be)
- Parking in full parking lots
- Drive-up ATMs and fast food drive-throughs
- What to do if you have an accident or other emergency
- How to read your dashboard and where to look for errors and warnings
- How to listen to the sound of the car under normal operating conditions and how that sound might change if the car is malfunctioning
- Parallel parking?!
So, those are a few of the items I work through with my children as I teach them to drive. Any ideas I missed? Feel free to add them in the comments!
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