The day will come when you will have to teach your child how to drive a car, and teaching your child to drive requires a lot of planning and patience. It can be very tricky for parents who are worried that their children might not able to handle the responsibility of driving safely.
How To Help Teach Your Child To Drive Carefully
Driving, after all, can be dangerous if not done carefully. As a parent, your responsibility is to teach your child how to be a good and responsible driver. If you are embarking on that, here are some tips on how to help teach your child to drive carefully.
1. Plan ahead
Driving lessons rates can reach up to $180, and this is because instructors often spend more time in planning than in teaching their students. Planning is important to make sure that the driving lessons will go smoothly and safely. There are a couple of things to plan before the actual driving lessons. Make sure that you have already prepared the following:
- Mapping out the route: Map out the route that your child will take when driving. Start with easy routes where there are fewer cars and easier turns, and eventually when your child has adjusted advance to more trickier places to drive. Mapping out a route is important so you can teach your child to drive from easy tracks to more complex ones. A good way is to start the route is to begin around your neighborhood and eventually leading to more complex roads.
- Study the road rules: Make sure that before you teach your child, they already know the road rules of your particular state. There might have been rules changes that you are not aware of. Hence, a quick review of the traffic and road rules and regulations will be beneficial.
- Checking the car: Before the driving lessons, make sure that the engine of your car is working properly and that the tires are maintained as well. Check the fuel level of your car, and as much as possible fill up your gas to avoid having to stop the lessons midway.
- Have an agenda: Plan out the lessons that you want to teach your child. You can first start by teaching your child about the car itself and how to operate it. Then you can teach about safety rules when on the road and on how to follow traffic lights and signs. It is important that you plan out your teaching agenda. This way you can make sure that you have taught everything that your child needs to know when driving. Take note that driving cannot be learned in one day, hence plan out which lessons to learn on each day of your driving lessons.
- Check the weather: It’s best that you check the weather for that day before you plan driving lessons. Teaching an inexperienced driver is best done on sunny days.
2. Orient your child about today’s lesson
Before teaching, explain to your child what to expect for today’s lesson. For example, “Today we are going to learn how to change lanes and to park.” This way your child will be able to understand which lessons he or she is going to expect for that day.
3. Practice patience
Remember that this is your child’s first time to drive on the road. Making mistakes is a natural thing for anyone who is learning something for the first time. Hence, it’s important that you practice patience.
Whenever you child makes a mistake, avoid yelling or criticizing immediately. Do not talk down to your child or give negative comments as this will only discourage them from learning. Instead, speak in a soft tone or if you have any comments about your child’s driving, ask him or her to pull over and explain the error properly and calmly.
4. Use constructive criticism
When you give your child a comment about his or her driving, use constructive criticism. Start by praising the good things that your child has learned and then point out the things he or she needs to improve on. For example, you can say, “The turn you made was smoothly done, however, next time we could try decreasing the speed of the car to comply with the state’s speed limit, otherwise we might get a ticket from the police.”
5. Let your child drive
It is important that you let your child drive. Don’t anticipate mistakes and warn your child constantly. Keep talking at a minimum so as to help your child focus. Oftentimes parents find themselves nagging while their child is driving, and this can be very stressful for a first-time learner who can’t even focus on the road. Let your child drive and when you need to explain something to him or her, ask to pull over and explain the error properly.
6. Be an example driver
It is important that as a father or mother, you lead by example. Your child will now be more aware of your driving, and you have to set an example by following the rules and regulations that you want your child to follow. Hence, avoid speeding through yellow signal lights or going over the speed limit. Teach your child the importance of responsible driving so that he or she may apply it as well when it’s time to drive.
Conclusion
Parents often find it nerve-wracking to have their child drive their cars. However, at some point, your child has to learn how to drive. Hence, when that time has come where you take on the responsibility to teach your child to drive carefully, make sure that you know how to plan ahead, practice patience and be an example driver yourself. You can also click here to learn more about driving carefully to avoid crashes with other vehicles.
