Teaching Parents How to Teach Those Young Aspiring Drivers

By John Kelly
Tuesday, September 29, 2009

How do you teach teenagers how to drive safely? Jim Schmidt thinks the key might be teaching parents how to teach teenagers how to drive safely.

Jim is the director of motor vehicle safety programs at Howard Community College. Four years ago, the school started a program to teach people how to drive motorcycles. A year ago, they decided to make the leap from two wheels to four. But rather than focus on young drivers, Jim and company decided to focus on their parents. Said Jim: "They have a lot of anxiety about teaching kids to drive, and they don't have the skills and knowledge to do it."

With funding from the Feds and the State of Maryland, Jim has spent a year developing a curriculum, a process that included convening focus groups of 17- and 18-year-olds. Jim asked them: What is it like being behind the wheel with mom or dad in the passenger seat? What tips do you have for parents?

"I was really surprised how seriously kids took the whole thing and how adult-sounding their comments were," Jim said. "They're nothing like we assume them to be about this. They really do take it seriously."

Here are some of the observations that came up again and again in the focus groups:

-- Don't act scared or nervous. It just makes us scared . . . and nervous.

-- Tell us what the plan is before we leave. We want to know what we'll be doing.

-- Be supportive. When you give specific positive feedback, it helps.

-- Don't use the time to talk about something else you don't like. We're trying to learn to drive here, okay?

-- When you're letting us practice driving, go to the places we go when you're driving. Even though we've been to the mall a million times as a passenger, we don't know how to get there as a driver.

-- Expect some mistakes. Otherwise, why would we need you? You don't have to mention every single little thing we do wrong.

Jim learned to drive from his dad. "My father was an engineer, so he taught it from an engineer's perspective. . . . He was not a patient man at all."

Jim remembers that his dad's head was "in a perpetual state of about-to-blow-off. . . . He was a very good instructor, but he would get angry when I made mistakes."

I asked Jim how many times he had to take his test before he passed.

"I didn't actually pass my driving test," he said.

What, never?

"When I took it, I didn't pass it. My dad gave some sort of Masonic sign to the examiner, and he passed me."

Dan Brown, white courtesy phone!

Jim just taught his daughter Emma how to drive. "I made some of the same mistakes my dad made, and I somewhat improved on what he did," he said.

The Howard class is held on two evenings. In addition to learning how to teach their teens, parents learn some of the what to teach them. For example, Jim said many of us were taught to position our side mirrors incorrectly. Setting them so you can see the edge of your car ensures a big blind spot.

"What you should really be seeing toward the outside of the sideview is the far side of the lane next to you," he said. (You can find instructions on how to adjust the mirrors at http://www.cartalk.com. Search on "mirrors." Said Jim: "It really does work.")

Howard will offer the class monthly through the winter. It's designed for Maryland parents, but anyone may attend. The cost isn't fixed yet; it will probably be around $30. Call 410-772-4808 for information.

Hey, Jim, if this proves to be successful, perhaps you could branch out further, teaching parents how to teach their kids about that other big taboo subject: sex ed.

"That'd be interesting," he said.

Crash Course

Gene Dodd said he enjoyed my earlier column about learning to drive. He lives in Raleigh, N.C., but was born and raised in Washington and graduated in 1966 from Western High School, now Duke Ellington School for the Arts.

He took driver's ed from AAA, but some of his classmates took it at Western, where they used a black 1960 Ford four-door.

"One day walking back to the school from the stadium a few blocks away, several of us observed the driver's ed Ford," Gene wrote. "It was on the street in back of the school, on the sidewalk, with a city lamppost draped horizontally across the hood. I never heard any further of it, but would assume either that someone got an 'F' in driver's ed, or that some instructor got fired!"

My e-mail: kellyj@washpost.com