Congratulations! Your child has passed his or her driving permit test, despite your tefillos! He has never passed a written test in his life, but this one he passed just fine. You half expected the DMV to call you in for a conference after the test.
“We’re really worried about your son.”
“You and us both.”
And now you have to teach your child to drive. You are not ready for this. You know how to drive just fine, but you’re thinking there should maybe be a course on how to teach people to drive.
This is it. Our apologies.
TEACHING YOUR CHILD TO DRIVE: A CRASH COURSE
Sorry about that too.
STEP 1. SHOULD YOUR CHILD DRIVE?
This is not really a step, but let’s talk about this. I mean sure, the law is that a person can get a license before the part of their brain that assesses risk is fully developed, and your opinion doesn’t matter here. On the other hand, you’re putting your child in control of what is your most expensive and dangerous possession, unless you count the child.
Also, I know that the years move more slowly from a teenager’s perspective, but to me, it’s like, “You want to learn to drive? You just started sitting in the front seat, like, pretty recently!” And they say, “What? I can be an adult.” And you say, “The only reason we’re even in this situation is that you pestered me a million times until I broke. That’s not a very adult thing to do.”
If they’re smart, they will try to explain to you the benefits of having another driver in the house – benefits that had probably never occurred to you in all your years of knowing this day would come. Your child says, “I can run errands for you!” and they list like five places they can go for you, for examples. And you say, “All of those are places that you currently walk to for me. So now you want us to pay for gas and insurance and worry about your safety, plus I know there’s no parking there, which is why I always have someone walk – all to make it more convenient for you to do kibud av?”
And they’re like, “Well, I can drive there and then you can get out of the car and go into the place!” And I’m like, “That was your job!” And he says, “Yeah, but this way I’ll get back faster.”
“So you can sit back down on the couch and get back to doing nothing in a timely manner?”
STEP 2. IS YOUR CHILD ACTUALLY READY?
This is another great question. Because to my knowledge, the permit test doesn’t really focus on real-world questions. It has questions like, “How much alcohol are you allowed to drink before driving?” And you can’t just write, “Zero.” That’s an unacceptable answer. So apparently, there’s a minimum too.
Point is, it’s all on you.
STEP 3. BEFORE YOUR CHILD DRIVES
- Whenever you drive, be careful to exhibit behavior that your child should be doing. That way, he or she can say things like, “I should signal my turns, because my father has been signaling his turns for the last three weeks or so.”
- Teach your child what the various lights on the dashboard mean. At least the ones that you know. (“This one means, “Ask mommy.””)
- One article I read said that before your child’s first lesson, you should make him or her read the manual on how to operate your car, as a way of procrastination. Someone should read it. At the end of this stage, the article says, “He should know how to change a flat, start and stop the car, fasten a seat belt, etc.” This is when you’re teaching him about seat belts?
STEP 4. GETTING INTO THE CAR WITH YOUR CHILD
- Only one parent should teach the child at any one time, for the same reason that the president and the vice president don’t travel together.
- Assure your child beforehand that you love him or her very much, but you’re going to be yelling. A lot. As if they can’t hear you, sitting right next to them.
- Make sure to bring a clipboard. I’m not sure what that does, but driving instructors always have clipboards.
STEP 5. ASSUMING THE CORRECT POSITION
- With your right hand, you want to be clutching that little handle above your window. That way, if the seatbelt somehow fails, you’ve still got it covered.
- Your left hand, meanwhile, should be clutching the little handle over the driver’s window. You can never be too safe.
- The clipboard can take care of itself.
- If you can, try to use a car that has a handbrake, and keep your left hand on the handbrake at all times. Or, if you want, put your right hand on the handbrake at all times and your left hand on the steering wheel. Your child’s hands should be at 10 and 2, and your hand should be at 5.
- If you don’t have a car with a handbrake, then your foot should be on the actual brake. Let your kid figure out how to work around you. It will serve him right for all the years that he kept dropping balls in the car while you were driving down hills.
STEP 6. CHOOSING WHERE TO GO
- On your first few outings, you want to take your child to an empty parking lot, so he or she can practice going around imaginary cars, and also going through some of them. And all you have to worry about is light posts and shopping carts.
- The idea here is to let your child get a basic feel for the car’s controls – how hard to press the gas to achieve what speeds, how to make turns that are not super wide or super tight, and how to stop the car smoothly instead of making your forehead hit the windshield every time.
- In order to do this, though, you actually have to find a big empty parking lot, which you thought were everywhere, but now that you’re trying, it turns out are not so easy to find. Like you pictured that there would be this huge abandoned mall within reasonable driving distance to your home, but there is not. Usually that’s good news.
- I mean, everyone says, “Just find a parking lot.” Where is there a parking lot? You can’t even Google this. And a parking lot that is being actively used is actually more difficult than the average street, because it has pedestrians walking every which way as if there are no cars losing patience behind them, drivers backing up, circling angrily, accelerating into parking spots…
- Yes, there might be a few shut-down businesses near you, but almost no parking lot is as big as you imagine it’s going to be. Most lots are like 2-3 rows of cars. You drive a small circle several times and you’re done. “This is productive. We’ve been doing this for 20 minutes and you have yet to make a left turn. Don’t hit the store!”
- New drivers need you to tell them things like that, in case they forget.
- Some say that the secret to finding empty parking lots is to just find a functioning store and go at night. In the dark. The problem, though, is that permit drivers are not allowed to practice late at night, and during the day all the stores are open. This is how the government keeps permit drivers off the roads for a while.
- So basically, you kind of have to figure out where the people are not going to be depending on the time of year. Like if it’s a day that schools aren’t open, you can use the school parking lot. Unless there’s a camp there. And if it’s a day that schools are open, you can go to the park. The parks have all these nice little roads, too, with zero other cars. Just joggers. Let’s get their heart rates up a little more.
- Or, speaking of parks, maybe step one is to take your child to the amusement park, get on the bumper cars, and tell them that their goal is to not hit anybody. Even though everyone’s trying to hit them. And also not to end up spending the entire time tangled in the clot of empty cars in the corner.
- Alternatively, there’s a philosophy when it comes to swimming that you should drop your child in the deep end, and they’ll just magically learn. Maybe you can do that with driving! Start them on the highway! On the way back from their getting a permit, simply merge onto a highway and yell, “NOW!” and switch seats. While the car’s moving. If you don’t get all the way switched over, that’s fine, because it means your left foot is still on a pedal. The only difference between this and swimming is that here you’re throwing yourself into the deep end with them.
STEP 7. CHOOSING WHICH ONE OF YOU IS DRIVING THERE
- I mention this because on his first day with a permit, my son wanted to drive to the empty parking lot. And I wasn’t even sure which one we were going to. So I said, “If you drive to the parking lot, you don’t need a parking lot!”
Anyway, that is about as many steps of procrastination I can give you before you actually have to let your child start driving. So the first step to that is—Oh, wait, it turns out we’re out of space here. We’ll do it next week, then.
Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia, a monthly humor columnist, and has written six books, all published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
