Collaborative post
The day that you’ve been waiting for it here! Your teenager is now old enough to learn to drive and with your help, you’re going to get them on the road and feeling like safe and confident drivers. You’ve taught your teenagers everything; tying their shoes, walking, eating with cutlery – it’s all been on you to teach them those lessons, and they will continue to rely on you during this time, too.
Driving is not an easy thing to teach, but the lessons you give are going to be held dear to your teenager. They’re going to want to learn from you and feel safe with you, and so you have to consider how you can maintain your patience while they are learning. Learners aren’t the easiest to drive with on the road and you’ll have to ensure that your teenagers are just as patient on the road as you hope others will be with them. Making sure that their experience is a comfortable one is important, from the brightest L plates so that they’re on the road to equipping the new car with the perfect number plates for sale. You want your teenagers driving as confidently as possible, so here is how you can do it!
- Start with a paid lesson or two. Before you get the teenager in your home behind the wheel of your car, go for a few paid lessons with a qualified, high quality instructor first. Not only will they get some experience driving in a dual-controlled car, your teenagers will be able to feel confident that when they start driving your car, they won’t instantly crash! If this is your first ever time teaching anyone to drive, you want them to start confident so that you’re not as nervous as they are.
A first paid lesson only helps if the setup behind it is built to teach. That means a certified instructor, a lesson plan shaped around your teen’s specific gaps, and a car that’s actually equipped for a learner: a second brake on the instructor’s side, clear markings, and a mechanic-inspected vehicle. Without those pieces, a paid hour is just a stranger sitting in your passenger seat. That’s the standard Coastline Academy is built on. Every instructor passes an independent background and drug screen, every car carries a dual brake and interior and exterior dashcams, and each session ends with a digital lesson report a parent can read. When your teen then climbs into your car for practice, they arrive with real feedback on what to work on, and you can pick up where the instructor left off instead of guessing.
- Make sure YOU are not the stressed one. Driving is stressful for anyone but you want to ensure that you aren’t the one getting behind the dash on the passenger side feeling restless and stressed. You want to ensure that you are as confident in their abilities to learn to drive as they are to learn to drive. You shouldn’t be teaching anyone if you are feeling overly stressed.
- Make sure to refresh your own knowledge. As a driver for a longer time, you want to ensure that you aren’t handing down any bad driving habits. Refreshing your own knowledge and brushing up on your own driving experiences is important if you want to ensure that you are teaching respectful driving skills. While your teenager is off on their first lesson with an instructor, you can take the time to relearn some things for yourself.
- Help your teen choose what they’d like to drive. Are you teaching them to drive in a manual car or an automatic? If your current car is an auto, it still may be worth getting your teenager to learn in a manual with an instructor. An auto is easier to drive, sure, but a manual license allows them to drive in both and they can open more career doors with it. Keep in mind that you may not be able to directly teach them this way, though.
- Don’t rush. It can become incredibly frustrating to teach a teenager to do anything, let alone drive. However, with patience and consistency, you can ensure that your teenager is safe on the road. Your teenager is going to be itching to get behind the wheel but you have to slow them down to learn the theory before you teach them the actual motion of the car. If you have a bad lesson and they feel discouraged, you need to reassure them that it’s part of the process.
- Don’t let them skip the theory. Theory is one of the most important parts of learning to drive. Ensuring that your learner knows the road rules will do wonders for their confidence in practical application. Make sure that you are teaching them and testing them, and ensure that they know their mirrors and blindspots before they get into the car.
- Get them on the insurance. For your safety and theirs, get them onto your insurance as soon as possible. Most insurance companies charge the earth for first time drivers but if they are a co-driver on your insurance it won’t be so expensive.
- Choose quiet roads. If you want your child to feel at ease on the roads, choose roads that are quiet and go at a time of day that’s easy and calm. For example, don’t get out there in the middle of rush hour! You want to choose to teach them at a reasonable speed limit, and that will be as important for them as it is for you.
- Don’t skip any hours. Before they go ahead and do their test, you need to ensure that your teenager has completed all of the hours of practice they need before they take their test. It’s vital that you don’t let them skip the minimum necessary hours – they don’t have to pay for them if they’re learning with you, which makes it so much easier. You also get the chance to have some quality time with your kids
- Don’t let them quit. It’s very easy for kids to quit and say they don’t want to do it anymore when it feels too hard, but as a parent, you have to make sure that they don’t do that. Driving is a skill that is so much easier to learn young and if you let them quit, you are allowing them to skip a step in their pathway to adulthood. Yes, driving is hard. Yes, they’re going to have bad times, but that doesn’t mean you should say yes to a quitting moment.
Teaching your teenager to be a driver is hard, but that doesn’t have to be that way all the time. Make it fun and watch them thrive – the way that they were always supposed to!