Teaching young children to drive

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

Research by the AA located that one particular in 20 individuals consider obtaining into the passenger seat with their learner child behind the wheel is much more stressful than giving birth, acquiring via exams or dealing with illness.

Residence service

Tempting as it may be to hand your kid more than to a specialist instructor, a lot of men and women just can’t afford to fork out for lots of lessons, which signifies home tuition might be the only option.

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

Bear in mind that to supervise a learner driver, you should have held, and nevertheless hold, a complete 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 kid learner’s brother or sister volunteers to take them out for lessons, make confident they meet these legal needs.

Be prepared…

1st and foremost, make certain you and your child are correctly insured. Speak to your insurer and let them know you will be taking your kid out for lessons. If you do not, you threat obtaining your cover invalidated in the occasion that one thing goes incorrect although they are behind the wheel.

After you have got your cover sorted, the very first issue you must do if re-familiarise oneself with the Highway Code.

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

Your youngster will have to sit a theory test just before their practical driving test, so the greater you know your Highway Code, the more you will be in a position to support them with this.

Back to fundamentals

Always talk via the basics with your kid ahead of letting them take the wheel, and emphasise the significance of staying safe.

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

Why not see if you can find a massive and close to-empty vehicle park exactly where they can initial encounter being in manage of the car?

And if you’re venturing onto the road, believe about your route and the time of day – quiet roads outdoors rush hour appears a excellent beginning point.

Killing machine

I would, nevertheless, advise against my father’s opening gambit when he was teaching me, which was “A automobile is the most powerful weapon you’ll ever have in your hands. If you’re ever going to kill anybody, it will be with this.”

While this might be true, twenty years on I’m nonetheless a nervous driver.

Maintain calm and carry on

Even though it might be really frustrating when your teenager does not seem to be listening to your directions, do your ideal to maintain your cool.

A single of the biggest difficulties parents face is that they don’t have dual controls, which indicates a lot of foot-pumping on imaginary pedals when factors don’t go as you’d like them to.

Temper, temper

Your organic instinct may possibly be to grab the wheel from your youngster, but losing your temper while they are behind the wheel could be incredibly harmful. If they are generating errors, get them to pull over so you can discuss where they had been going incorrect.

The calmer you are, the much more successful your lessons are probably to be. When you start off to really feel your stress levels rising, it’s consequently a great notion to attempt and feel about how you would really feel in your child’s shoes – a little bit of empathy can go a extended way.

Practice tends to make best

Try to commit to regular lessons that are not spaced as well far apart. This implies there won’t be the chance for your kid to neglect what they’ve learnt.

You ought to also try, as soon as they’re competent and confident, to take them on as many distinct roads and routes as possible so that they have as broad an expertise as possible.

Don’;t forget that learning to drive is a slow process, so you’ll need to have to give lessons over a period of many months ahead of your youngster is likely to be prepared to take their practical test.

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

We’d adore to hear your knowledge and suggestions in the box below…

Teaching young children to drive