When you’re a dad, and you’re teaching your child to drive, it’s a huge responsibility. Your worst fear is likely your child being in an accident and getting hurt or hurting someone else.

While you can’t prevent every unknown variable that comes with your child being on the roadways, as a father, what you can do is prepare your child for the challenges that come with driving.

The following are 6 important things to know when you’re teaching your kid to drive.

1. Start with the Basics

Sometimes, when we’ve been driving for years or decades ourselves, we may forget about the importance of the basics and the fact that our teens might not automatically know them. You want to start out with the foundational elements of being a good driver.

Give your teen a tour of the different parts of the car, including the gas and brake pedals, turn signals, mirrors, and the parking brake.

Let them get comfortable with simple things like where to put their hands on the wheel.

2. Teach Your Child About the Vehicle

One area where parents often fail to educate their kids is on the vehicle itself and how to maintain it. These are important skills. Some of the skills to teach include:

·         How to change a flat tire

·         How to check the oil levels

·         Inflating a tire

·         Reacting if there is an accident

·         Turning on headlights and parking lights

·         Using the windshield wipers

·         Understanding what dashboard notifications mean

3. Go Over Defensive Driving Skills

You can’t control what other people do on the road, and that’s scary, but defensive driving can help safeguard your teen against other people’s bad roadway decisions.

Defensive driving skills rely on always looking at what other drivers are doing and anticipating their next move.

Specific things to reach as far as defensive driving include maintaining a safe distance around the entire vehicle, making smooth lane changes, and how to navigate through intersections. Using mirrors and checking blind spots are also important. Learning these skills can help your teen be a proactive rather than a reactive driver.

4. The Responsibility That Comes with Driving

Teaching your teen to drive isn’t just about the skills themselves. It’s also about helping your teen understand all the responsibility that comes with sharing the roadway. You want them to fully understand the weight of this responsibility, so go over concepts like:

·         Your teen needs to learn about their responsibilities as far as car maintenance. Any warning lights or sounds need to be promptly investigated. Your teen should either let you know or know to take the vehicle to a mechanic.

·         Distracted driving is one of the single biggest risks for accidents, particularly among teens. You should not only go over how important it is for your teen to avoid it but also model good behaviors yourself.

·         Your teen should take on some of the financial responsibilities that come with driving so they begin to understand them more and take more ownership of their time behind the wheel. For example, maybe they pay for their gas or part of their insurance.

·         Teens need to learn about pedestrian safety, especially since they’ll be driving near their school or in their neighborhood, where there are more likely to be pedestrians.

5. Don’t Show Your Emotions

When you’re teaching your child to drive, it’s easy to get frustrated and angry or overly nervous and anxious. Try to keep these emotions inside because they’re going to take a toll on your child as they’re trying to learn to drive.

Remain calm and even-tempered because that’s how you want them to stay when they’re driving as well.

6. Teach Skills Progressively

It can be helpful to have a plan to teach your child driving skills. You want to be somewhat structured in that plan, so you don’t miss anything.

Start with the simplest skills, and teach them in a parking lot or big open area where no other cars are around. These skills might include backing the car up, making turns, shifting gears, and coming to a smooth stop.

Then, once your child masters those basics, they can start to interact with other drivers, but still in a very safe environment. For example, maybe you move from an empty parking lot to one with cars. Don’t forget you may share the road with large vehicles such as trucks which can be quite stressful for your child. Easycompare have great tips on how to safely drive next to trucks and other heavy vehicles to give yourself and your child peace of mind.

It’s only once every other basic skill is well-understood that you should move on to the more advanced ones like driving at night or in the rain.