Teaching your child to drive

A friend of mine taught his wife how to drive a manual by asking her to meet him at a empty parking lot after work. When she got there, he threw her the keys to the manual, hopped in her car and said "see you at home!" and left!!!! A very angry wife showed up ~20 minutes later

the first car i ever drove was my dad's 1930 model A 5 window street rod that had a Buick Nailhead backed with whatever the Buick version of the Powerglide was called... my grandpa let me drive it in a hayfield and taught me that cranking the wheel all the way to the left and nailing the gas resulted in many fun happy good times..

i was 11 years old at that time, but i was sitting in my dad's lap and steering that car down the road when i was about 5 or so... back in the late 70's, cops just smiled and waved when they saw a little kid sitting on their dad's lap steering a street rod with too much power and no seatbelts- life was just better back then..

the second vehicle i ever drove was my grandpa's 1970 Chevy half to 2 wheel drive pickup. don't know what V8 engine was in it, but it had a powerglide and i got to drive it on a lot of gravel roads between the ages of 11 and 14..

the third car i ever drove- and the first on a paved public road- was my mom's 4 cylinder/4 speed 86 Mustang LX. she was tired and let me drive it the last half of a 45 mile drive home after a day of shopping... i was 14 and had never driven a stick before. i found it came naturally..

but mostly, i learned by sitting in the front seat and watching what the adults in my life did while in control of a car and emulated that on bot a conscious and subconscious level.. and it must have been ok, since i've had a license since October 30, 1990 and have zero accidents and only a couple of speeding tickets to show for it..

I have no kids but have taught friend's kids and some other people how to drive. I haven't seen much of a difference between learning on an auto or manual but being patient and getting seat time are important. My sister finally decided she was going to get her license this year at 35 years old. She made it a block with my father and walked home, about 2 miles with her husband. I took her out for a few hours at a time making her get on and of the highway in rush hour traffic, parallel park probably 100 times, made her read street signs, and tell me what was behind us every so often to get into the habit of moving her eyes and head around and not just looking straight ahead. Like any task the more often you do something correctly, the better you will get at it so you want to spend a lot of time letting them do it supervised and correcting mistakes before they become bad habits. When I started driving my father and grandfather made me drive everywhere. Both of them drove commercially all their lives. They yelled a lot but in the almost 25 years since I've only had two at fault collisions and no tickets.

My father tried to teach my mother to drive, around 1950, in my father's 1933 Chevrolet phaeton. That ended so well that she didn't try again until 1965.

As usual, I dissent.

I would bet that most of the manual votes in this thread have never taught their own daughter. Big difference.

So, here's the deal. You MUST teach her manual a some point (primarily because it makes her a much more attentive driver), but she will HATE you for it. She will lump all her frustrations together and blame you for everything. She will be angry at you, and consider it a particularly unfair punishhment that none of her friends have to endure, and will say bad things about you every time you make her drive "that thing" (the manual car).

Trust me, it's worse than puberty.

Man up. Do it anyway because it will make you both better. She will forgive you one day, and she'll even thank you (in about 10 years).

The auto is Ok to start, but you've got to force the issue on the manual soon.

I agree about a quiet voice, and certainly don't let your wife teach her.

Also agree about learning to start a manual car with no throttle.

I'll also add that autocrosses are fabulous, and a great father/ daughter bonding activity.

Except for the "hate you for it" part, I agree with all of Paul's post above.

Thanks guys! The good news is that she is interested in learning how to drive WELL and hasn't thrown in the towel yet on the manual. That said, I'm going to focus on the auto for now, so she can be comfortable with piloting a car in traffic.

Ultimately, she claims to want to both auto-x and HPDE! I could wish for nothing more!

With my two daughters, I waited until they got the basics right before we started on the manual trans. One picked it right up, and the other came close to testing the Miata's clutch to destruction. With the rest of their driving, I tended to teach it like I taught flying. Probably because I put three people in the hospital as a teen driver and also have buried a few friends over the years.

One thing I learned as a flight instructor is to keep calm and don't raise your voice, even as they're trying to kill you. That especially works when teaching daughters to drive. Yelling just leads to tears and lots of drama.

Another thing I did with them was to stick some bamboo poles in some traffic cones, and set them up in the corners of a parking spot. That let them learn to get into and out of parking spots without hitting the cars in the adjoining spots. The cones alone are too short to see without the poles, and the poles would fall over at the slightest touch, so there are no gimmes if they screw up. Works with parallel parking, too.

Both girls thought I was being a hardass sometimes, but the driving test turned out to be just a formality for both of them.

I really don't understand the fear of manuals. Having grown up in England I don't know a single person who learned to drive on an auto. BAck then the only cars with autos were executive cars that no one would be allowed to learn on. Not one of us fretted about a manual.

Take the kid to a parking lot and let the lugg, chug ans stall for 15 mins. After that the gearbox will become second nature. Then hit the road and and worry about car control, placement, awareness etc. But spend 15 mins in a parking lot to learn a manual first.

If you really want to screw the kid up you could teach them to shift in a three stick Mack like my grandfather taught me.

True story---- the first manual car I drove was my buddy's 1983 Mitsubishi Starion Turbo. He threw me the keys, and tore off in my Mom's Buick Century. (that I had given him the keys to) We were to meet across town at a lunch joint.

I had a buddy in the car who had driven stick before--- so he helped me along. By the time we arrived at the restaurant, I had the hang of it.....and he still had a bit of clutch left!

Duke wrote: Except for the "hate you for it" part, I agree with all of Paul's post above.

OK, perhaps I was being a little dramatic.

My dad drove a van. One day, while going down the highway he just stood up and walked into the back and said "all your's son". You learn by doing and not being a pansy.

(That story did not actually happen BTW)

Adrian_Thompson wrote: I really don't understand the fear of manuals. Having grown up in England I don't know a single person who learned to drive on an auto. BAck then the only cars with autos were executive cars that no one would be allowed to learn on. Not one of us fretted about a manual. Take the kid to a parking lot and let the lugg, chug ans stall for 15 mins. After that the gearbox will become second nature. Then hit the road and and worry about car control, placement, awareness etc. But spend 15 mins in a parking lot to learn a manual first.

As far as I've been able to ascertain, every Brit learned to drive on an old Land Rover in low range in a field. They then got a Mini for a first car, which also taught them self-reliance and problem-solving skills.

Me, I learned to drive in an old Land Cruiser in the Outback

Not much to add. I'm in the start with auto camp until they get used to the driving part, then they'll have more capacity to absorb the clutch when they are used to being around other cars, etc.

The learning trick discussed here is magic and it works. With an hour of soft launches (never touching the gas) most kids get it. Two extra credit steps. Use the same technique for slope starts. Practice catching the backward roll just with the clutch. Here you don't need forward progress, but if you can stop the roll with just clutch then the next step of blending in gas gets them moving forward. Second bonus is harder. If the lot is huge and open, have her get the car rolling with her eyes closed (after she has practiced eyes open for a while). This will make her focus on the leg muscle movement and the idle sound and help her connect with the process.

glueguy wrote: Not much to add. I'm in the start with auto camp until they get used to the driving part, then they'll have more capacity to absorb the clutch when they are used to being around other cars, etc. The learning trick discussed here is magic and it works. With an hour of soft launches (never touching the gas) most kids get it. Two extra credit steps. Use the same technique for slope starts. Practice catching the backward roll just with the clutch. Here you don't need forward progress, but if you can stop the roll with just clutch then the next step of blending in gas gets them moving forward. Second bonus is harder. If the lot is huge and open, have her get the car rolling with her eyes closed (after she has practiced eyes open for a while). This will make her focus on the leg muscle movement and the idle sound and help her connect with the process.

Thanks for the tips. I like this approach!

Adrian_Thompson wrote: I really don't understand the fear of manuals. Having grown up in England I don't know a single person who learned to drive on an auto. BAck then the only cars with autos were executive cars that no one would be allowed to learn on. Not one of us fretted about a manual. Take the kid to a parking lot and let the lugg, chug ans stall for 15 mins. After that the gearbox will become second nature. Then hit the road and and worry about car control, placement, awareness etc. But spend 15 mins in a parking lot to learn a manual first.

It depends a lot on the specifics of the gearbox. The first manual I drove was a late-80s Taurus, and yeah, within a fairly short period of time (it might not have been 15 minutes, but certainly an hour or two) I was fine. The next one I tried was my dad's 85 Escort, and it was much, much harder to get it going without stalling it. Even with the previous experience in that Taurus, it took me multiple hours to be willing to run it on the street, and a summer's worth of commuting to be really comfortable with the idea.

So sure, plenty of people have learned to drive for the first time with a manual and survived to tell the tale. OTOH, that doesn't mean that learning on an automatic first and then learning the manual isn't a better way.

In reply to codrus:

Sounds like less of a gearbox issue and more of a 80s E36 M3box with malfunctioning emissions controls issue. The hardest manual I ever drove* was my Yugo before I deleted the rat's nest and got the vacuum advance working correctly, before that it had no balls coming out the hole.

*Close second was a circa 2011 German spec diesel Ford Transit van, 6 speed, incredibly peaky power, incredibly vague and grabby clutch.

FWIW I learned in a field where the worst I could do is sling some grass. My nervousness was non-existent because I didn't have to worry about hitting anything.

Then when I got on the road, I knew how to operate the vehicle and then I just had to worry about not hitting things.

I know this isn't an option available to everyone but it helped my stress level when I was learning

Kenny_McCormic wrote: In reply to codrus: Sounds like less of a gearbox issue and more of a 80s E36 M3box with malfunctioning emissions controls issue. The hardest manual I ever drove* was my Yugo before I deleted the rat's nest and got the vacuum advance working correctly, before that it had no balls coming out the hole. *Close second was a circa 2011 German spec diesel Ford Transit van, 6 speed, incredibly peaky power, incredibly vague and grabby clutch.

Maybe. My sister totaled that car long before I became sufficiently car-aware to be able to figure out why it was so lousy. I do remember that first gear was pretty tall, and I'm pretty sure it was fuel injected. I was learning to drive back when Rick Astley was on the radio, not just an internet meme (1988), so the '85 Escort was pretty new at that point.

The second worst gearbox I've ever driven was a mid-80s Toyota pickup owned by a friend of mine in college. He was surprised that I could start it without stalling -- apparently driving that Escort around had made me pretty tolerant of crappy gearbox/clutch setups. :)

Adrian_Thompson wrote: I really don't understand the fear of manuals. Having grown up in England I don't know a single person who learned to drive on an auto. BAck then the only cars with autos were executive cars that no one would be allowed to learn on. Not one of us fretted about a manual. Take the kid to a parking lot and let the lugg, chug ans stall for 15 mins. After that the gearbox will become second nature. Then hit the road and and worry about car control, placement, awareness etc. But spend 15 mins in a parking lot to learn a manual first.

The thing that I tend to consider with these stories is that everyone else on the road was also driving a manual. Here in the land of automatics traffic moves differently. In and around Chicago if you aren't following a carlength or closer to the person in front of you someone will either cut you off or ride your bumper because you aren't driving like everyone else. Engine braking confuses the hell out of people around here.

I learned on a stick driving back and forth from Herlong CA to Reno NV, about an hour each way. With that being said I did cheat and take my test in an automatic that belonged to my now FIL.

Keith Tanner wrote:

Adrian_Thompson wrote: I really don't understand the fear of manuals. Having grown up in England I don't know a single person who learned to drive on an auto. BAck then the only cars with autos were executive cars that no one would be allowed to learn on. Not one of us fretted about a manual. Take the kid to a parking lot and let the lugg, chug ans stall for 15 mins. After that the gearbox will become second nature. Then hit the road and and worry about car control, placement, awareness etc. But spend 15 mins in a parking lot to learn a manual first.

As far as I've been able to ascertain, every Brit learned to drive on an old Land Rover in low range in a field. They then got a Mini for a first car, which also taught them self-reliance and problem-solving skills. Me, I learned to drive in an old Land Cruiser in the Outback

Close, Dad ran Land Rovers, but I learnt in my moms BMW 2002 and my first car was an Imp not a Mini, but as I say, you were real real close.

I think part of the problem is how the teachers are approaching this.

If you treat driving, and approach teaching it in a fun (but safe) manner, it seems to significantly cut down on the stress.

It isnt that hard. Anybody with a brain can drive. It takes some practice, and especially with a manual, requires an understanding (if not in theory, intuitively) of how the clutch operates, which is something that is learned over time.