Lisa and Mary Dell, of Grown and Flown, discuss their teenagers who are learning to drive:
As we write this we are teaching our youngest children to drive. This is a path we have been down before, but as our impulse for self-preservation is undiminished, we still find it a bit frightening this last time. Learning to drive may be one of the great adolescent milestones but, for parents, it represents a major push back from our kids as they claim their independence from us. Truthfully, the whole process is driving us crazy.
Mary Dell is teaching a daughter and Lisa is teaching a son, so in effect we are living on different planets. The one thing we share is the deep scary realization that we are placing a lethal weapon in the hands of children we love, but who we know to be only part way on their journey to maturity.
The adolescent brain craves risk in a way that it never will again and it is at this moment that we climb into the car, our nervous, or perhaps worse, over-confident teen behind the wheel and we say, “Daddy will be really angry if you get us killed, so let’s take it a step at a time.”
