4 tips for teaching your kids to drive
Let's be honest, teaching your kids to drive can be terrifying. Sitting in the passenger's seat while your teen learns to break, turn left, merge onto the highway, and parallel park is an experience like no other. Do you remember your parents teaching you to drive?
When behind the wheel with your kids, put yourself in their shoes. Try to be calm and helpful instead of emotional and rash. Make sure they have valid car insurance and remember that sometimes you just need a little professional help.
Here are four things you need to know about teaching your kids to drive:
Driver's Education is worth the cost
"Start to break. OK break. Break now." This was the common phrase used by my mother many years ago when she was teaching me to drive. After our third one-on-one lesson, she decided that paying for a professional driving instructor was a good investment.
Putting your kids in Driver's Education is an investment worth the cost. Not only can it help your kids how to become safe drivers, but it can also help you save on car insurance. Those classes are a win-win.
Install telematics
Telematics is one of the newest ways to save on your car insurance. It's a usage-based technology that monitors your teen's (and your) driving habits and helps insurance companies reward safe drivers. It's very easy to use: all you need to do is attach a device to the diagnostics port in your car and drive. Telematics measures all aspects of your teen's driving patterns from acceleration speed to breaking.
Not only can it help you get lower car insurance, but it also lets you track your teen’s driving habits. Doesn't that sound like a good idea?
Practice makes perfect
Taking the driver's license test in summer when the roads are clear and the sun is shining is a good idea. Learning how to drive on a quiet street is easy, but it doesn't represent true Canadian weather and road conditions. If you really want your teen to learn how to be a safe driver, have them practice is less than perfect scenarios.
Take them out at night and have them practice in the dark. Take a spin around the block in the rain and teach them how to park in the snow. This will help your teen become a well-rounded driver. It will also help them prepare for real-life-situations while on the road.
Avoid yelling
According to the Wall Street Journal, teaching kids to drive can create a communication barrier between parents and children. This is evident by the way many parents lose their cool. It can strain even the best relationships between parents and teens. Driving is a time to be calm and cool. Parents shouldn't let their emotions show.
"Scientists at the University of Iowa recently tested a positive strategy for parent-teen communication about driving,” the Wall Street Journal reports. “In a recent study of 83 parent-teen pairs, parents were trained to ask open-ended questions about teens’ driving, summarize the teens’ answers without judging or criticizing, and describe how the teens’ driving made them feel, using “I” statements."
This better way to drive helped keep the relationships more positive.
Even though the situation may be scary, teaching your kids to drive should be a calm, rational experience. If that doesn't work, hire a professional to help them learn the road rules.