Teaching My Kids to Drive

I wrote recently about my own experience learning to drive. I don’t remember that being a contentious time with my father, though starting to drive a manual transmission took a bit of doing.

But teaching my kids to drive? That was harrowing.

My son, poor kid, as the oldest, had the worst of it. We started in my minivan. After a couple of parking-lot jaunts, which seemed to go well, I let him out on the streets. I picked a Sunday morning drive to church, and I told him to take the street route, not the highway route. So we set off, him in the driver’s seat, me beside him, and my daughter in back. My husband, I think, was on Naval Reserve duty.

“Slow down!” I yelled, before we were even out of the driveway. And that is how it went. Me terrified, son getting more upset, and daughter in the back wishing she were someplace else.

I feared for my life and the lives of my children. I worried about the other cars on the road. I could see insurance claims at every intersection. I hated the loss of control. It was mostly about loss of control, as I pushed on the imaginary brake pedal I wished I had.

Sunday after Sunday, we went to church like this. I don’t think any of us got much out of the homily. We were all too busy recovering.

After a few weeks of this, we hired a professional driver’s education instructor for some Saturday sessions. Somehow, son became capable of maneuvering my minivan on the road to everyone’s satisfaction but mine. Shortly after he turned sixteen, I took him for his driver’s test, and he passed.

Note that he didn’t drive my husband’s car. Hubby drove a manual transmission, mostly so no one else would borrow his car.

Son’s high school was across town from where we lived, a distance of many miles. Therefore, he didn’t get to drive to school for the rest of his sophomore year. Until the last day of finals, when he begged me, so I let him take my minivan.

Sometime after noon that day, I got a call from my husband. “Don’t worry,” he said, “but our son was in an accident.”

Our firstborn, eager to catch up with friends after his last final of the school year, had taken a turn too fast, gone over a curb, and done something bad to the undercarriage of my minivan. It still was driveable, so he drove it the many miles north to our home. I hope he drove more slowly than when he hit the curb.

Once back home, at my husband’s instruction (son knew better than to call me), our teenage driver took the van to the dealer near our house. The dealer called my husband to authorize the repairs, then said, “Your son wants to talk to you.”

When he got on the phone, son asked my husband, “Who’s going to take me home from here?”

“You’re going to walk,” my husband replied.

Good for him!

Son walked to our house, which was less than a mile from the dealer. And he spent the next year and a half mowing our lawn for free to pay off the cost of the repairs.

By comparison, teaching our daughter to drive was easy. Both she and I had the advantage of having survived her brother’s experience. Plus, she has a calmer, less nervous disposition than either her brother or me.

She did the trips to church for a few weeks, then, while she still had her driver’s permit, I let her drive me through rush hour traffic to her school. This went on for the last several months of her sophomore year. From her school, I took the keys and drove to work. Many evenings, we reversed the process after her sports practices. Her school wasn’t quite as far as my son’s from her house, but the route traversed a freeway, bridge, and narrow trafficway full of morning commuters. I thought I was very brave.

She got her driver’s license soon after her sixteenth birthday, and then insisted on driving me whenever we were in the car together. Some twenty years later, she still insists on doing the driving.

It’s amazing that most parents and children survive until the kids are independent. Those teenage years were a threat to my safety and sanity, but sometimes now I miss having the kids at home.

Did you teach your kids to drive?