Learning to Drive – A Guide for Parents
Learning to drive is one of the great milestones in early adult life, and, though optional, represents a new era of independence and responsibility for a certain majority of young people across the country. The test is not the easiest one to pass, though, with less than 50% of test-takers earning their license. As the parent of a teenager learning to drive, what can you do to help them across the finish line – and help them towards that newfound independence?
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Preparing Your Teen for Driving Lessons
Driving lessons are naturally the first step in your teenager’s driving journey. However, lessons can be expensive, changeable and otherwise difficult to book in – making every hour count on the run-up to a test.
You can help minimise the load on such lessons by giving your teen some advance prep on cars, controls and essential functionality. The more they know about how to operate a vehicle before they get hands-on driving time with an instructor, the less time they will have to spend getting to grips with everything as they start.
Of course, before you start even with this, you’ll need to make sure your kid has everything they need to legally start lessons. This includes making sure they’ve got their provisional driving license, and that it’s still in date if they already have one!
Conducting Effective Driving Lessons
Driving lessons don’t need to be the only time your teen gets hands-on experience with a vehicle, though. As a driver yourself, you may be able to give your teen more time on the road, and perform some out-of-lesson teaching of your own. Temporary learner driver insurance allows them to legally drive on UK roads with a supervisor in the car – so you can ride as passenger, and impart some wisdom as you go.
Said wisdom should be imparted, though, with extreme patience and calm. Even if your young one can be a frustrating student, the road is a dangerous place, and lessons aren’t often best learned when stressed! Positive reinforcement and constructive criticism are key to a successful extra-curricular drive.
Ensuring Safety and Building Good Driving Habits
Finally, it is especially important that you instill the importance of road safety and positive driving habits in your teen. They will hear this from their instructor, but the more they hear it the better it will take – particularly if they have boy-racer peers with a dangerous streak already!
Indeed, peer pressure can be a hugely dangerous influence on young drivers, and particularly with regard to seatbelts. Seatbelt usage halves the chances of fatality in a vehicle collision, so if you impress anything on your newly-driving teen it should be to keep their seatbelt on.