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Teen Driving   
How to Get Your Teen Off To A Good StartIt’s common for parents to be very uncomfortable with the thought of their teen driving. And with good reason. Accidents and fatalities are highest in the 18 to 25 year old age groups. So what can you do to help your teen avoid becoming a statistic? Like most things in your teen’s life, the only way to have influence over them is to be involved. Make it an important goal that you undertake together. Get your teen driving and give them the benefit of your guidance and patience. It will set them up to be confident driver in control of any driving condition. Sounds great! How on earth do you do it? You may live in an area that has a school run driving program. This will provide your teen with excellent theory and some good practice. But they will still need plenty of practice with you.
Time To Get Your Teen Driving On The Road
You’ll need heaps of patience and a commitment to ensuring your son or daughter is safe on the road.
In the initial stages your teen will be very focused on what is happening inside the car: Checking the Speedo Changing gears Finding the indicators Checking mirrors Trying to gauge how much or little to turn the steering wheel. During this time, make sure you are their eyes and be aware of pedestrians and other vehicles. Keep to quiet back streets, a new housing development on a weekend can be quiet if the builders are all finished for the day and the residents haven’t moved in yet, supermarket parking lots used to be good, but so few shut these days - try them first thing in the morning, on the way to school. A lot of parents find it hard to express their instructions to their learning teens. Especially if things are happening quickly. Practice when you are driving yourself; say out loud what you are doing. Touch the brakes here….a little more. Remind them when to indicate. Teach them what to do if they get too flustered: Check you mirror to make sure no one is right behind you. Indicate right (or left, depending what country you are in), check your mirror again, brake smoothly and pull over in a safe place. Don’t get angry when they make seemingly ridiculous mistakes – there is so much to think about and most of the skills with driving are so repetitive that experienced drivers forget they once had to learn them too. Everyone learns at a different rate. With every lesson, your teen’s confidence will increase and they will be able to focus more and more on what is happening outside the car. Teen Driving Happens At Your Teens Pace
Some learners aren’t really that interested in getting their license. Some are absolutely busting to get started. Both can become good, safe drivers. It all comes down to the amount of regular practice they do throughout the learning period.
It’s a given that one way to help cut out the high accident rate for new drivers is to increase their experience behind the wheel. Take every opportunity to practice in a wide range of driving situations. It can help to keep a log of the types of conditions your teen has practiced int. That way you will be able to see a pattern and know where new opportunities need to be offered. For example, you may notice after a few months that your teen has never driven at night – go back to the quiet back streets (if you need to) and start some night sessions. Keeps your teen driving in all kinds of conditions while you are still there to watch out for them? It’s your chance to help them be a safer, confident and competent driver when they are finally out on their own. How Much Teen Driving Practice is Enough?
How many hours of practice does a pilot have to do before they are qualified to fly? Something like 180? And they don’t have a narrow path to negotiate with other planes constantly coming at them and a whole range of obstacles to cope with. Yet we think 180 hours is nothing – so why expect your teen to learn to drive in anything less? In fact they’ll probably nail it in far less, but it doesn’t hurt to keep supervising them until they’ve completed around 120 hours.
In fact, in Australia it was recently made law in some states that Learners must log 120 hours of supervised driving in a wide range of conditions before even being allowed to book their driving test. When your teen is ready to start their lessons, book them in for 2 or 3 with a professional instructor. It will help them on their way and give you a chance to listen to the way the instructor articulates the instructions. Once you have taken over, keep your teen learning by providing them with ample opportunities to practice and DVD’s they can watch to help them visualize what they need to do in tricky situations or even just to learn some tips on how to pass their test. Apart from the basics, a really good driver must be able to deal with the unexpected – from hazards and changing weather conditions to other cars and mistakes by other road users. Any extra advice you can get during the learning period will help.
Take a look at the DVD set offered by Get ready to Pass as an excellent addition to your teen driving kit.
 Return from Teen Driving to Jobs for Teens
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Parenting Quote Adolescents are not monsters. They are just people trying to learn how to make it among the adults in the world, who are probably not so sure themselves.
~Virginia Satir, The New Peoplemaking, 1988
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