Our fourth kiddo just passed her driver’s test this week, and honestly, I’m pretty happy to hang up my hat as the resident driving instructor. It has not been my favorite part of fathering (and that’s on me, not my kids).

Here are some things that helped along the way, and I wish I had known them when I started…

1. Buy these magnets. We put them on both front doors and the rear of the car. I’m positive it reduced the anger and frustration of other drivers, which increases safety for everyone. You don’t want a stressed out student driver getting honked at if you can avoid it. It also caused other drivers to give us a wide berth, which is great, all things considered. We went through two sets of these (they’re pretty cheap on Amazon).

2. Read The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallway. I know I how to drive, but I didn’t know how to TEACH driving. This book has nothing to do with driving, but everything to do with teaching someone a skill. I changed my teaching style dramatically after reading this book.

3. Drill the simple. We spent ample time drilling in order to reduce cognitive load:
– Red light right? Stop, yield, go.
– Red light left? Stop.
– Green light left? Yield, go.
– Green light right? Go.
– Etc.

4. Use CLEAR communication about stopping, and practice it. We trained in a parking lot that if I say STOP, it always means STOP NOW. If I needed them to stop up ahead somewhere, or slow down to a stop, I would say, SLOW TO STOP. It was helpful for me to know that if something came up and I said STOP, they would react immediately and without thinking.

5. Remember that driving is a very complex skill that doesn’t feel like it to you anymore. But it is, and the cognitive load for the newbie is very high.

6. It’s about more than driving. It’s about a kid learning resilience and processing and how to not freak out even when lots of data is coming at them.

7. Your kid doesn’t know what they’re doing, and neither do you. Breathe. Hug. And look forward to a future day when you celebrate with your daughter because she just passed with a 100% in a Chevy ASTRO…