Before my daughter starts driving, I'm going to take her around where I grew up and show her the places where people I knew died in car accidents / other issues, and explain why they died:
- These two girls were speeding to make it home by curfew, ran off the road, and died in a car fire over the side of this hill - don't speed if you're running late. Let me know, and get home safely.
- This is where a guy was on drugs and ran into a telephone pole. - don't do drugs. If you do drink and no longer feel comfortable in the situation, call me and I will pick you up to get you home. Don't try to drive.
- Here's the parking lot where my friend OD'd on Heroin. Don't try it. Not even once. There is a huge difference between weed and harder drugs, even though weed and harder drugs are sold by the same people. Stay clear of all of them if you can.
- Here's the cliff where my friend fell 60 feet and died trying to showboat his climbing skills. So many things today have been made extremely safe (car driving assistance, etc.) - you need to know which activities have real consequences and treat them accordingly.
- Here's the parking lot where my friend and I almost flipped his truck trying to do slides on snow at 60 mph. Don't do that.
It will be a rough day, but driving is a serious responsibility and learning from others' mistakes is better than making your own.
What I like about this approach is where you say hey don’t do that, but if you do, just call me, don’t worry about getting in “trouble”, I just want you to be safe and I’m here for you.
I don’t have kids but my parents were like this and I valued it immensely. They never wanted us to be in a position where we needed help but thought we couldn’t ask.
My father did something like this. He wasn’t even trying to teach us a lesson or anything. We had gone back to his hometown to see some relatives and we took a drive around. He told us all those stories you mentioned above. It did not make me think about being safer. It just made me think, “Wow, now I know why my father is such a @#$% downer all the time. Note to self: Dad is broken, don’t take anything he says seriously.” So be careful how you present it because your kids’ thought process is not the same as yours.
I don't necessarily disagree with your ideas here but I do want to offer some of the "child's" perspective.
My father was an EMT for 20 years, overlapping most of my childhood. My memories (particularly of car trips) are peppered with stories like you describe. The "being there to help" part is the part I'd recommend you emphasize (and is something I try to do with my daughter). I carry some mental "scars" from my father's stories 30+ years later. Beyond a point the stories didn't offer any more lessons and were just disturbing.
(I don't hold any of this against my father. I think his heart was in the right place. I count myself lucky to have had the best parents in the world.)
Thanks. Yeah I’m thinking this would be a one day thing before the driver’s test or before riding with others in high school, so she understands the responsibility of having a driver’s license, and that it can have life-altering consequences. And if she doesn’t feel comfortable riding with someone she can bail out and I’ll find a way to get her home.
> This is where a guy was on drugs and ran into a telephone pole. - don't do drugs. If you do drink and no longer feel comfortable in the situation, call me and I will pick you up to get you home. Don't try to drive.
Drinking is “doing drugs” and it sounds like you’re advocating for her to decide if she’s too drunk to drive based on how she feels, which is terrible advice.
God damn, alcohol is so endemic in society that sometimes people miss really obvious problems with how they think about it “because it’s not like ‘real’ drugs”.
Let me clarify - In that specific instance, the guy was on cocaine and his heart exploded, then he lost control of the car while speeding and hit the telephone pole. So “drugs”.
And the drinking part, to clarify - preferably my daughter doesn’t drink until she’s in college and legal (“don’t do drugs”). But if she is at a place and has even one drink, she should call me to get home, rather than try to drive because she is no longer comfortable staying at the party.
I was at parties at age 13 and 14 that had drinking. I was never pressured into drinking and didn’t until I was older, but others could be peer pressured. A 16 year old at a party with alcohol or weed is not unrealistic, and if she makes a mistake and accepts a drink or a hit, I don’t want her to compound the mistake and end up with a DUI or putting her or someone else’s life in danger.
- These two girls were speeding to make it home by curfew, ran off the road, and died in a car fire over the side of this hill - don't speed if you're running late. Let me know, and get home safely.
- This is where a guy was on drugs and ran into a telephone pole. - don't do drugs. If you do drink and no longer feel comfortable in the situation, call me and I will pick you up to get you home. Don't try to drive.
- Here's the parking lot where my friend OD'd on Heroin. Don't try it. Not even once. There is a huge difference between weed and harder drugs, even though weed and harder drugs are sold by the same people. Stay clear of all of them if you can.
- Here's the cliff where my friend fell 60 feet and died trying to showboat his climbing skills. So many things today have been made extremely safe (car driving assistance, etc.) - you need to know which activities have real consequences and treat them accordingly.
- Here's the parking lot where my friend and I almost flipped his truck trying to do slides on snow at 60 mph. Don't do that.
It will be a rough day, but driving is a serious responsibility and learning from others' mistakes is better than making your own.