For every adolescent, learning to drive is much more than just a mechanical process. It is a time when the take a relatively small but hugely significant foray in to adulthood. As the long-suffering parent, it a time fraught with pressure. You have to sit next to them in the car and look on as your baby take their first steps away from you. You have to put up with the expensive sounds coming from your gearbox and the acrid odours coming from the clutch, and you have to endure it whilst being supportive and positive, and vigilant enough so everyone makes it home safely.
Thus said, your role beside the novice driver is a crucial one. Modern driving is about a fine mix of technique, good luck, and a huge amount of experience. It's often said, but practice does indeed make perfect. Your role as the experienced driver in the car is to pre-empt the risk long before the driver will be aware of them.
So, you're in for a stressful ride then? Well, maybe but you can lots to minimise he degree of anxiety for both the driver and yourself with some careful preparation and planning. Try to plan your sessions with consideration of what they have just covered in their regular lessons. This will give a great opportunity for the learner to reinforce previous learning.
As mentioned, experience is by far the best teacher so try to arrange your sessions to take in a range of conditions. This applies equally to road conditions, such as driving during rush hour start-stop traffic, as to weather conditions. Don't forget the crucial lessons in night driving and multi-lane carriageways. Try to take in a range of different roads covering a range of different speeds.
My tip is to give particular attention to the sort of roads you have around your home, where the novice driver will spend most of their time after passing their test. For example, I grew up in a quite rural area but did my lessons after finishing work for day in a nearby city. Most of my driving was actually done on narrow country. The very particular skill set required for this wasn't even touched upon by my instructor.
I'm sure that the first place you will head for will be he nearest empty car park. Rightly so. These empty open spaces provide the ideal environment to learn some basic skills. You should be able to practice braking, gear changes, and turning here. With a little imagination you can lay out a course to give them some further experience of reversing around a corner and the dreaded parallel park! There are normally a few traffic cones to be found in car parks to help with this task.
As an experienced car owner one very important area you can give some crucial advice on is that of very basic car maintenance and the safety checks. These are such thing as changing a flat tyre, topping up the washer bottles and similar. This isn't something that is ever touched upon in lesson, and a little knowledge here goes a very long way.
To conclude, if you keep things organised and simple you really can't go too far wrong. Provide some warm up time at the start of each session and turn the inevitable mistakes into valuable lessons. If you approach things with the right attitude you are sure to enjoy this valuable time with your pride and joy. You decide if I'm talking about your car or your offspring!
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