Anonymous wrote:Sigh. My niece, who is now 25, STILL CANNOT DRIVE. Her younger brother, who is now 23, can.

She was always "too busy" but I think she was just scared. She also didn't learn to ride a bike (I kid you not) until about 5th grade when her mother FORCED it - as in, if you want to do that thing, you will need to ride your bike to it.

Her younger brother? Bike riding in 1at grade.

I think my sister should have PUSHED her to learn to drive in high school - now she's a 25 yr old who has to function (and spend $) with Lyft and Uber AND is trying to hide that she can't drive with her colleagues at work. And she lives in a big city so that's not a great place to learn to drive! Yes, she can have cat litter delivered by Chewy (and does) but honestly, imagine not being able to just jump in the car and drive to the store to pick something up??? I cannot!

Anonymous wrote:Sigh. My niece, who is now 25, STILL CANNOT DRIVE. Her younger brother, who is now 23, can.

She was always "too busy" but I think she was just scared. She also didn't learn to ride a bike (I kid you not) until about 5th grade when her mother FORCED it - as in, if you want to do that thing, you will need to ride your bike to it.

Her younger brother? Bike riding in 1at grade.

I think my sister should have PUSHED her to learn to drive in high school - now she's a 25 yr old who has to function (and spend $) with Lyft and Uber AND is trying to hide that she can't drive with her colleagues at work. And she lives in a big city so that's not a great place to learn to drive! Yes, she can have cat litter delivered by Chewy (and does) but honestly, imagine not being able to just jump in the car and drive to the store to pick something up??? I cannot!

Anonymous wrote:40% of 18 year olds don't have a license.

MC/UMC kids that live in the suburbs or exurbs or small cities with poor public transit, like 15% don't. UMC kids that live in the larger cities it's over 50%.

LMC families it's nearly 60% because often times there is no car at all or just one car that a parent uses all the time and/or the family just can't afford to add a teen to the insurance.

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Anonymous wrote:I think the criticism with this generation's disinterest in driving is justified, but if OP's kid is too busy, that's a different thing.

My kid is not old enough, but almost there, and she's really, absurdly busy. I can imagine her being even busier next year and saying, yeah we gotta put this off, there's no way I can pull focus from other things rn.

I agree it's an important life skill and it should be taught sooner than later, but waiting a few months (summer?) to me is no big deal and even appropriate.

But OPs kid already did drivers training. So how is she now “too busy” to actually practice driving? I’m assuming parents are driving her everywhere to all the things that make her so busy.

PP you quoted. You raise an excellent point. I don't know if what is keeping her DD busy requires driving (it may not) but yes, she should drive when you are taking her to activities.

Getting our kid to the point where they could drive our normal routes at normal times of day (often rush hour) took a while and concerted effort. That is the part that is hard to fit into a busy schedule. And for even moderately anxious kids it takes a while and quite a bit of parking lot/non-rush hour driving time to get there. The required hours (60!!!) went much quicker once kid was a basically competent driver who could drive to the places they needed to go anyway.

Excuses. Tell them they need to drive. They can manage in rush hour with you in the car. If they’ve don’t a driving training program, they’ve likely already had to do this.

In MD the required drivers ed class is just the book learning plus 6 hours of driving. They recommend you do the parking lot portion yourself so that the kid can actually drive with the teacher. So no, our kid had not already driven on roads and we actually take the responsibility to make sure our student driver isn’t a huge danger to others seriously. And we are actually doing all of the 60 hours which apparently no one does.

Anonymous wrote:I am going to take the other side of this debate.

If a teen lives in any compact city (DC, NYC, Boston, Philly, SF, Chicago, etc.) and takes public transport to school, to activities and to meet with friends, etc....what's the point of them getting a driver's license at 16.5 and then perhaps never driving anywhere for years.

Furthermore, perhaps they also attend college in a place where few people need or have a car.

If someone is a hesitant driver, why pay for them to be on the insurance for a car they will never use for perhaps 5 years...and how great will anyone feel about a kid who got their license 5 years ago, never drives...and now they just go drive and don't have to do any training or practice or anything.

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Anonymous wrote:I think the criticism with this generation's disinterest in driving is justified, but if OP's kid is too busy, that's a different thing.

My kid is not old enough, but almost there, and she's really, absurdly busy. I can imagine her being even busier next year and saying, yeah we gotta put this off, there's no way I can pull focus from other things rn.

I agree it's an important life skill and it should be taught sooner than later, but waiting a few months (summer?) to me is no big deal and even appropriate.

But OPs kid already did drivers training. So how is she now “too busy” to actually practice driving? I’m assuming parents are driving her everywhere to all the things that make her so busy.

PP you quoted. You raise an excellent point. I don't know if what is keeping her DD busy requires driving (it may not) but yes, she should drive when you are taking her to activities.

Getting our kid to the point where they could drive our normal routes at normal times of day (often rush hour) took a while and concerted effort. That is the part that is hard to fit into a busy schedule. And for even moderately anxious kids it takes a while and quite a bit of parking lot/non-rush hour driving time to get there. The required hours (60!!!) went much quicker once kid was a basically competent driver who could drive to the places they needed to go anyway.

Excuses. Tell them they need to drive. They can manage in rush hour with you in the car. If they’ve don’t a driving training program, they’ve likely already had to do this.

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Anonymous wrote:My kid is like this too. Anxious and not interested. I don’t care, she has to learn to drive. It’s a non-negotiable skill she needs in life beyond high school.

I have an aunt who, likely, is ASD but my grandparents surely didn’t know that raising her in the 60s and 70s. They coddled and pacified her and never made her do anything uncomfortable. She moved back in with them in 1995 when her roommates all married and then she never left. My grandmother went kid to an assisted living community last year and it sent my aunt into a literal mental tailspin. My grandmother has never been better but my aunt CANNOT cope with any aspect of adult life on her own . Intellectually she can, she holds a job, has tons of money saved, drives etc but she has spent her whole life never pushing herself through any discomfort and now she’s absolutely drowning. Can’t cook, but won’t learn. Believes she’s broke (living in a fully paid off house) because she has to pay utilities now. She’s scared of everything- driving to a city, public parking, trying new food. I think of her often when making choices for my kids, how sometimes never pushing them to do necessary but hard things is unintentionally cruel and sets them up for difficulties later on that they simply become too mentally rigid to manage.

I have an ASD young adult. Perhaps walk a mile in their shoes before becoming so...awful.

I don’t think some people can see beyond what they know and some have small worlds. There are many many reasons that teens don’t get their license right away or at all. The know it alls are all here.

If your kid is disabled to the point they CAN’T drive, you’re excluded from this convo. But many kids who don’t want to learn are not disabled and can drive and need to. Not making your kid learn something because they just don’t want to is a cop out. Our kids didn’t enjoy potty training but we made them do it even when it was hard for us.

It might take my anxious daughter longer to get comfortable driving alone and I can work with that but feeding her anxiety by saying “oh you don’t have to drive” would be a failure on me as a parent. Yes you have to learn. Yes I’ll patiently teach you. But letting them avoid it forever KEEPS their world small and fuels the anxiety rather than helping them deal with it in a healthy way and build emotional resilience by tackling something hard.

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Anonymous wrote:I think the criticism with this generation's disinterest in driving is justified, but if OP's kid is too busy, that's a different thing.

My kid is not old enough, but almost there, and she's really, absurdly busy. I can imagine her being even busier next year and saying, yeah we gotta put this off, there's no way I can pull focus from other things rn.

I agree it's an important life skill and it should be taught sooner than later, but waiting a few months (summer?) to me is no big deal and even appropriate.

But OPs kid already did drivers training. So how is she now “too busy” to actually practice driving? I’m assuming parents are driving her everywhere to all the things that make her so busy.

PP you quoted. You raise an excellent point. I don't know if what is keeping her DD busy requires driving (it may not) but yes, she should drive when you are taking her to activities.

Getting our kid to the point where they could drive our normal routes at normal times of day (often rush hour) took a while and concerted effort. That is the part that is hard to fit into a busy schedule. And for even moderately anxious kids it takes a while and quite a bit of parking lot/non-rush hour driving time to get there. The required hours (60!!!) went much quicker once kid was a basically competent driver who could drive to the places they needed to go anyway.

Anonymous wrote:My kids were both excited to learn to drive, but many of their friends were not. Older DC has a couple of friends who are now in their first year of college and still don't have a license. I don't know what their plan is.

But one thing that has come up - while I agree with a lot of the restrictions that are placed on first-year drivers (passengers, curfew, etc), it does remove some of the incentive to drive. Any time there are more than 2 teens going someplace, they either need multiple cars or they have a parent drive so that they can all ride together. They end up walking or taking public transit, or getting a ride from parents, even if they all have licenses, just because they'd rather travel together than split up into multiple cars. I don't think this is the whole story on kids not wanting to drive, but it is an interesting effect.

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Anonymous wrote:I think the criticism with this generation's disinterest in driving is justified, but if OP's kid is too busy, that's a different thing.

My kid is not old enough, but almost there, and she's really, absurdly busy. I can imagine her being even busier next year and saying, yeah we gotta put this off, there's no way I can pull focus from other things rn.

I agree it's an important life skill and it should be taught sooner than later, but waiting a few months (summer?) to me is no big deal and even appropriate.

But OPs kid already did drivers training. So how is she now “too busy” to actually practice driving? I’m assuming parents are driving her everywhere to all the things that make her so busy.

PP you quoted. You raise an excellent point. I don't know if what is keeping her DD busy requires driving (it may not) but yes, she should drive when you are taking her to activities.

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Anonymous wrote:The shaming of parents whose kids don't drive needs to stop.

Learning to drive at a young age is actually not the total perk you think it is. Brains take a long time to mature, and contrary to what a poster said, years of teen experience do not make up for immaturity. A young adult who has just learned to drive and integrated all the info in a 20 year old brain, for example, may be actually a more responsible driver than another 20 year old who integrated the info at 16. Learning later can mean learning better.

I don't even agree that it's logistically more complex to learn to drive as an adult. College is not more time-consuming than high school, because students usually don't have all the obligatory extra-curriculars that high schoolers have to do to impress admission officers. They have to time to learn if they wish.

It seems to me that the only perk of driving as a younger teen is home logistics, when parents don't want to drive their kids around anymore. For families who don't have that problem, and/or who live in semi-urban or urban areas with good public transport, that pressure does not exist.

I lived in Paris as a teen and got my license at 19. I didn't drive regularly until much later, to drive my oldest to preschool. I am a responsible driver.

You’re not wrong about brain development… but your argument about having more time in college makes no sense. Sure, they might have more time, but who is going to teach them to drive?? They don’t live at home anymore, so obviously not their parents.

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Anonymous wrote:My kid is like this too. Anxious and not interested. I don’t care, she has to learn to drive. It’s a non-negotiable skill she needs in life beyond high school.

I have an aunt who, likely, is ASD but my grandparents surely didn’t know that raising her in the 60s and 70s. They coddled and pacified her and never made her do anything uncomfortable. She moved back in with them in 1995 when her roommates all married and then she never left. My grandmother went kid to an assisted living community last year and it sent my aunt into a literal mental tailspin. My grandmother has never been better but my aunt CANNOT cope with any aspect of adult life on her own . Intellectually she can, she holds a job, has tons of money saved, drives etc but she has spent her whole life never pushing herself through any discomfort and now she’s absolutely drowning. Can’t cook, but won’t learn. Believes she’s broke (living in a fully paid off house) because she has to pay utilities now. She’s scared of everything- driving to a city, public parking, trying new food. I think of her often when making choices for my kids, how sometimes never pushing them to do necessary but hard things is unintentionally cruel and sets them up for difficulties later on that they simply become too mentally rigid to manage.

I have an ASD young adult. Perhaps walk a mile in their shoes before becoming so...awful.

I don’t think some people can see beyond what they know and some have small worlds. There are many many reasons that teens don’t get their license right away or at all. The know it alls are all here.