Chelle’s last blog post..To Do Part Two: Not Quite Everything

For now he gets wherever he wishes to go traveling via World of Warcraft or someone else in our household.

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NerdMom’s last blog post..Vance Walberg and the Dribble-Drive Motion offense

As for GPS monitoring telling her “I don’t trust you”, I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t trust new drivers to be as good as experienced drivers. Statistically, they’re not.

I’d rather my daughter not be a statistic, Donna, and if offending her or pissing her off is the price of that, so be it.

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Donna B.’s last blog post..Accountability, Not Exciting

It seems to me that this kind of monitoring leads to the opposite of building a trusting relationship. Like rammer illustrated above, constant or intrusive monitoring encourages sneakiness. Please don’t be offended, but requiring GPS monitoring strikes me as saying, loudly, “I don’t trust you.”

What if the first time your child is unmonitored and truly on their own is their first year of college? You want them to develop as much self-control and responsibility as possible before then.

Requiring teenagers to pay for their own gasoline and maintenance (including tires) is very effective in eliminating unnecessary driving. Teaching techniques for getting the best gas mileage also teaches them not to drive too fast or aggressively.

Teach them to check their oil, transmission and brake fluid, coolant and tire pressure. Require they change a tire without assistance in your presence. Provide them with a half tank of gas and require they keep it at that level. Explain the hassle and cost of running out of gas and replacing an overworked fuel pump.

Make a big deal of all this. Check up behind them randomly, telling them you’re going to do so. Ride with them, teach them things they’ll never get in driver’s ed, like how to use all their mirrors effectively and when not to trust them, safe use of cruise control, how to deal with distractions, how to control a skid, how to anticipate what that car or truck they are sharing the road with is going to do… whatever “teaching moment” occurs.

Then know that no matter what you do, you’ll still be a bit queasy every time they back out of the driveway.

Donna B.’s last blog post..Red Beans, White Rice, and the Blues

That, I think, goes hand-in-hand with why teens think they’re immortal. They haven’t been truly called into account for their actions (thank goodness, and thank good parents).

IMVO, part of parents’ duties involves increasingly exposing teens to the consequences of their actions. That might sound odd at first, but if you think about it, that’s something parents do naturally in other contexts. A 5 y/o child who spills grape juice on a new carpet, for instance, will be chided and possibly not given grape juice again for a while.

An older child who spills it will be told to clean it up and advised not to drink it again on the carpet.

A teenager will be informed they’re going to be paying for the carpet cleaning and then left to decide whether they’re going to risk drinking grape juice on the new carpet again.

Driving’s no different. She can have her freedom in her own car just as soon as I know she’s grown ready for that kind of trust.

And knowing that she has to earn that trust because I’m monitoring is what will prompt her to develop safe, self-directed driving habits from the get-go.

For me, that’s what it comes down to: inculcating responsibility in children by providing a framework in which they know they’re expected to demonstrate responsibility. Once they get used to doing so, you can take the framework way and… why, they remain responsible.

Kind of like training wheels for life.