What’s the worst nightmare every parent has to live through during the years of child rearing? Is it the day your kid leaves for school? Is it the day he/she brings home his/her first girlfriend/boyfriend? No sir! It’s the day he/she asks you to teach him/her how to drive.

car

What’s the dream of every teenager is most evidently the nightmare of every parent. In most of the states, riding shotgun with your kids during driving lessons requires you to have an active driving license. If you remember your teenage years of driving, steering, braking and parking were not the most challenging tasks. These are stuff most kids pick up on the first day of their lessons. But what really mattered were the techniques and key skills required by all drivers to avoid accidents.

Prepare to fight the risks of teenage driving

It’s a scary ride for each parent since most of them know the hotchpotch traffic of the freeway and the risk posed by other drivers and pedestrians. Small things go a long way to ensure safety for the kids. For example — stowing away the cell phone while driving and steering the car on snow or during heavy rains are things you need to be teaching your kids rather than putting emphasis on their finesse of parallel parking.

You should stay calm. This creates an air of confidence inside the car and in turn will calm your teen down during the driving lesson. There is no better bullet-proof vest than a calm mind during the times of crises. Having a calm mind when the car blows a tire or the accelerator wires come lose can save more than just one life. These are the few things parents tend to miss out on while giving driving lessons to their kids.

The most common mistakes that teens make even after getting their license include hitting the curb while parking, pulling out and crashing in oncoming traffic, missing a stop sign and underestimating the distance between them and the car right behind them. These are some serious mistakes that about 54 percent teens still make during their 19-mile driving assessment. This was the result of a study conducted by Dennis Durbin or Center for Injury Research and Prevention at the Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. If you want to ensure that your teenager gets professional and comprehensive driving lessons, consider enrolling them in driving lessons.

Gear up for the costs of car insurance

After the learning curve ends, you will need to pay for their car insurance and we all know how that’s going to end if your child does not know how to avert trouble on the road. So, once your kid gets his/her driver’s license, the next question that you will be asking is “how much does car insurance cost?”

The learning curve is quite steep during the solo learning process. After a few months of getting their driving license and driving alone on the roads, the propensity of such accidents taper off sharply. Essentially, no one has ever heard of someone landing up in the hospital because he couldn’t parallel park. So, while giving driving instructions to your kids, remember a few things:

  1. He will not just be driving in the daytime. Give instructions for nighttime traffic and driving safety as well.
  2. Teach your kids how to face problems of driving, rather than steering them away from them.
  3. Teach your kids how to face adverse weather.
  4. Train them to drive on bad roads, inside residential areas and the importance of going slow in school zones.

A mother’s tasks are never done! And this only goes to prove the saying. When the time comes to teach your kids to drive, a bit of preparation will go a long way.