Teaching children to drive

Teaching your kids to drive can be stressful for even the most patient of parents, so it pays to do a lot of preparation first.

Research by the AA found that 1 in 20 men and women feel obtaining into the passenger seat with their learner youngster behind the wheel is more stressful than providing birth, acquiring by means of exams or dealing with illness.

Home service

Tempting as it might be to hand your youngster over to a expert instructor, numerous men and women just can’t afford to fork out for lots of lessons, which signifies home tuition could be the only alternative.

According to the RAC, the typical learner needs 20 hours of practice to pass the driving test, in addition to 45 hours of driving lessons, which expense up to £25 an hour.

Bear in mind that to supervise a learner driver, you have to have held, and nonetheless hold, a full UK licence for the car you are teaching in, for a minimum of 3 years.

You need to also be over the age of 21, so if your child learner’s brother or sister volunteers to take them out for lessons, make positive they meet these legal needs.

Be prepared…

Very first and foremost, make confident you and your youngster are effectively insured. Contact your insurer and let them know you will be taking your child out for lessons. If you don’t, you threat having your cover invalidated in the event that one thing goes incorrect although they are behind the wheel.

Once you have got your cover sorted, the 1st thing you ought to do if re-familiarise oneself with the Highway Code.

Chances are if you passed your test a lot of years ago, you’ll have forgotten some of your driving theory, so it pays to do a bit of swotting up.

Your child will have to sit a theory test prior to their practical driving test, so the much better you know your Highway Code, the much more you will be capable to help them with this.

Back to basics

Often speak via the basics with your child ahead of letting them take the wheel, and emphasise the value of staying safe.

You will require to let them know that you might need to act decisively to avert an accident, but this doesn’t mean you are angry with them.

Why not see if you can find a large and close to-empty vehicle park where they can 1st experience becoming in control of the automobile?

And if you are venturing onto the road, think about your route and the time of day – quiet roads outside rush hour seems a great starting point.

Killing machine

I would, nonetheless, advise against my father’s opening gambit when he was teaching me, which was “A car is the most strong weapon you will ever have in your hands. If you are ever going to kill anyone, it will be with this.”

Whilst this might be true, twenty years on I’m nevertheless a nervous driver.

Maintain calm and carry on

Even although it may possibly be very frustrating when your teenager doesn’t seem to be listening to your guidelines, do your greatest to hold your cool.

1 of the biggest troubles parents face is that they do not have dual controls, which implies a lot of foot-pumping on imaginary pedals when factors don’t go as you’d like them to.

Temper, temper

Your natural instinct may be to grab the wheel from your child, but losing your temper whilst they are behind the wheel could be really hazardous. If they are producing errors, get them to pull over so you can go over exactly where they were going incorrect.

The calmer you are, the more productive your lessons are most likely to be. When you start off to really feel your tension levels rising, it is as a result a great idea to attempt and believe about how you would really feel in your child’s footwear – a little bit of empathy can go a lengthy way.

Practice makes best

Try to commit to typical lessons that are not spaced also far apart. This signifies there won’t be the chance for your kid to forget what they’ve learnt.

You ought to also try, once they’re competent and confident, to take them on as a lot of different roads and routes as feasible so that they have as broad an encounter as attainable.

Keep in mind that learning to drive is a slow approach, so you will require to give lessons more than a period of many months ahead of your kid is most likely to be ready to take their sensible test.

Have you any knowledge of teaching your offspring to drive? Or certainly, had been you taught by your mother or father, or an older sibling?

We’d really like to hear your encounter and recommendations in the box below…

Teaching children to drive