5 Basic Lesson Plans for Teaching Your Teen to Drive

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No one will ever call me OCD and I am okay with that. Teaching my daughter to drive, however, has brought me as pretty close to this level.

I don’t know that anything quite prepares you for the moment when your child first takes a seat behind the wheel. It’s scary (to say the least), and I wanted to take the keys back from her as quickly as I handed them over. Plenty of teenagers … and adults … don’t have driver’s licenses and get around just fine, right?

But teenagers look forward to driving like a child waiting to open presents on Christmas morning. It’s the ultimate right of passage.

However, as a parent, the feeling is a little different. Wasn’t she just learning to walk the other day? How can it possibly be time to drive? Is she really ready for this, despite what the age requirement for a license says? It’s been so long since I learned to drive myself, do I really remember all the “technical” rules? What is highway hypnosis again?

But, as much as we want to hold on and keep them small, they do grow up and you have to accept new milestones. So I smiled and agreed to teach my daughter to drive.

What had I gotten myself into?!?

The seriousness surrounding this teaching task became all too real when my daughter, Caroline, was finally behind the wheel. She made a right-hand turn out of our neighborhood and stopped, dead in the street.

“What do I do now?”

In those ten seconds, I thought about the imaginary car that was sure to barrel into us at any moment, the colorful language my father used when he was teaching me to drive, and how important it was that I not show fear. I had to stop myself from saying, “What are you thinking? GO!” Instead, I said, calmly, “You don’t stop in the middle of a busy street, dear. Accelerate now.” What I was really thinking was I was never getting in the car again with her … but of course that wasn’t the answer.

So I began to reflect…

I am a teacher. I teach children to read, write, analyze, understand, problem-solve and appreciate, but I have never taught anyone to drive. I barely lived through learning to drive myself, but I knew I was going to need to be at least partly responsible for teaching Caroline to drive. When she was two years old, this never occurred to me. Now, she is 16, and I need to teach her enough to try and keep her alive.

Scary, huh?

There are a million mistakes she can make that can cause damage. Damage to the car, someone else’s car or, heaven forbid, herself. I needed a plan. Teachers have plans. So I developed lesson plans to help keep us both on track and ensure I covered skills necessary for my daughter to become a successful driver.

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Writing down a list and creating lesson plans for each driving session made the task seem less daunting.

I know it sounds a bit crazy, planning out driving lessons so meticulously, but I felt like I needed to have a little bit of control in a situation that can make you feel fairly out of control. It helped calm my nerves and was a good reference point for me to take a look at when I wasn’t pushing the invisible break pedal into the floorboard.

So, here are the first 5 lesson plans we covered the next few times we hit the road.

Lesson 1: The Basics

  • Stopping at a stop sign
  • Turning left and/or right at a stop sign
  • Different things to consider (yes, we actually pulled over and talked about this)
  • Stopping at a four way stop
  • Proceeding through a traffic circle
  • Turning left while still moving
  • Turning right while still moving

Whew, made it through that day. Maybe, I should talk to our doctor about Xanex.

Lesson 2: Building on the Basics

  • Stopping at a traffic light and turning into the lane closest to you when there is more than one
  • Parking in a parking lot
  • Things to consider when backing out of a parking spot (Note: Walmart is not a fun place to do this)

Lesson 3: Intermediate Skills

  • Changing lanes

This was all I could handle that day! Backing up and changing lanes are when most accidents happen!

Lesson 4: Extended Driving and Introduction to the Interstate

  • Time for a longer drive
  • Accelerating up to 65 mph
  • Merging into traffic on the Interstate (during light traffic time … sorry to slow you down Mr. Truck Driver)

Lesson 5: Practice Makes Perfect

  • Moderating your speed going into a curve, driving up a hill or going down a hill
  • More practice with changing lanes
  • Driving in heavy traffic (yep, Lexington at 5 p.m. … this one scared Caroline as much as me!)

I’ll be honest, I did not cover everything as planned. There were some surprises and things we had to cover on the fly. And to my daughter’s credit, as she became more confident behind the wheel, she took direction much better, she responded more quickly to changing conditions, and began to loosen her death grip on the steering wheel. I was even able to relax a little.

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A little anxious, yes — but this driving thing doesn’t have to be so terrifying after-all.

She still has a way to go before she is ready to take her test, but I was able to impart the basics. I am not terrified for her to be behind the wheel … anxious, but not terrified. I think I finally understand the anxiety my parents had every time I drove away that seemed so ridiculous to me at the time.

Caroline still has more to learn about driving. She certainly is not finished, but we’ve made some good progress.

Parallel parking? I will leave that to the professionals.

Have you had to teach your teen how to drive? What tips worked best for you?

2 COMMENTS

  1. Thanks for this! I’m taking a friend’s daughter out driving this afternoon in rural British Columbia, Canada, and thought someone may have done some homework for me… this will definitely help us. I’m hoping she’ll learn to love driving as much as I do.

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