I do not like teaching my children to drive. After the first boy got his license, I resolved that I would be more diligent about getting the second boy started. And I tried-- but I really really hate teaching my children to drive. My husband declines to assist until they have mastered the basics, despite my argument that since I did all the toilet-training, he should do all of the driver's ed.
I didn't love getting them out of diapers, but nobody ever died of toilet training.
Anyway. Boy #2 is reasonably competent. He starts the school's behind-the-wheel class this week, and I expect that he'll get his license in the late fall or early winter.
This summer when I was feeling stressed and alone while teaching him to drive, I googled "teach my teen to drive" and found only a bunch of unhelpful stuff I already knew. Kids should not use their phones while driving! [thanks for that] Neither should you! [you think?] Those mailboxes are not as close as they seem! [no, actually, they are every bit as close as they seem]
The tidbit I am sharing with you came from an offhand comment by an acquaintance. When she mentioned that they had done multiple parking lot excursions, after they'd spent time out on the roads, a little light bulb went off in my head. When I was learning to drive myself, and when I was teaching my own son to drive, I viewed the parking lot as something to graduate from-- a place to figure out the gas and the brake. Parking lot driving was for the rankest of beginners, I thought. But once my second son had some slow and easy practice on residential streets, we went back to a giant empty parking lot.
Empty parking lots are perfect for figuring out the position of the car in space. "Pull into any space," I told him again and again during one 30-minute practice period. "Now, without craning your neck or opening the door, tell me where the wheels are in relation to the yellow lines. What about the front end? Now hop out and see if your prediction was right." On our next excursion to a residential neighborhood I could say to him, "You're too close to the mailboxes -- can you move closer to the center line?" He could correct his position without overcompensating and he could hold the corrected position-- a skill that took a hair-raisingly long time for my oldest to figure out.
Empty parking lots are also the perfect place to practice turning right and turning through acute angles. It's easy for a novice driver to get a right turn wrong, but in a parking lot you can stop immediately after you return the wheel to neutral and you can put the car in park. You can hop out and talk about where the wheels are in relation to the yellow lines, and how that would translate to a real-road driving situation. It's much easier not to clip the curb or swerve into oncoming traffic with 30 minutes of parking lot right-turn practice under your belt. And making a hard right turn (or left, I guess) is even trickier, but an empty lot with lines painted for angled spaces makes it a much more manageable task.
Now that I have typed this all up it seems so un-rocket-science-y that I'm wondering if I should even post it. But maybe I'm not the only nervous parent who thought it was important to get out of the parking lot and onto the road. And it is, I suppose. But an extra hour of parking lot time, interspersed with on-the-road practice and focused on lane position and clean turns, made me a lot more comfortable this time around.
My dad taught me in a giant parking lot. Actually at the state fairgrounds, which was lots of parking lots and roads with almost nobody on them. He'd make up scenarios. "That space is the driveway - pull in and then back out again to turn around." I didn't do as much of this as he did, and I think it would have helped a lot with one of the children in particular if I'd done more.
Maybe it's not "rocket science-y" but driving is not innate. It's a learned skill that needs patience and new ways of looking at things, and your approach makes a lot of sense.
Posted by: Tracy | September 27, 2015 at 10:07 PM
I learned to back up easily during a (VERY) long afternoon in an area much like Tracy's fairgrounds. We drove all over it backwards.
But I wimped out and let Roger teach our kids to drive...
Posted by: Salome Ellen | September 28, 2015 at 07:17 AM
Thank you! This will coming in useful very soon.
Posted by: Amie | September 28, 2015 at 07:43 AM
My 15-year-old will be getting her learner's permit soon.....this is much appreciated!
Posted by: giddy | September 28, 2015 at 08:13 AM
This is brilliant. I still have 6ish years before I'm in this situation but I hope I remember this idea. Or that I remember to google it. Haha
Posted by: lakeline | September 28, 2015 at 08:56 AM
That makes so much sense. I wish I'd had more of that kind of parking lot practice. I had a terrible sense of where my right wheels were especially and learning to judge that on city streets was terrifying.
Posted by: Melanie | September 28, 2015 at 02:37 PM
We live in a big(ish) city where driving isn't that necessary. My almost 8 year old currently won't ride in cars (she is, as she explained to me, very environmental) and it isn't a big problem overall. But eventually I want them to have this skill even though it would be so, so easy just to skip it. Self driving cars will be a reality in 10 years, right? Fingers crossed?
Posted by: Pippi | September 29, 2015 at 02:38 PM