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Advice for parents giving driving lessons

parents giving driving lessons

Are you a parent giving driving lessons to a household member? If so then you may find advice from driving training experts helpful preparation.

With lockdowns and the new Covid safety regulations for driving instructors backlogs and waiting lists for driving lessons is likely to become part of the new normal for the short and medium-term future.  Aside from lockdowns, there may also be future disruption to normal lessons and tests depending on the infection rate in your area and track and trace isolations.  So it makes sense to supervise regular driving practice alongside driving lessons to gain the experience needed to be test ready.

Before supervising any private driving practice please check with your insurance provider that your insurance is valid during current covid restrictions in your area!  You can find out more about insurance and the rules in this blog from Jamjar about supervising a learner driver.

Planning for driving lessons

Driving instructors spend a long time training before being able to give lessons. During their training they plan a lesson structure, get to know suitable routes and areas for different skill levels. If you want to keep your driving practice stress free it makes sense for you to do the same and not just jump in the car and hope for the best. Plus, depending on how long ago you passed your driving test, the chances are learning to drive has changed since you last had a lesson. We highly recommend the DVSA Guide to Driving: The Essential Skills. It is inexpensive and will help you to research, plan and discuss together with your learner driver exactly what you will be doing before you get in the car.

Now you have planned what you will be doing in your driving lesson, choose a suitable route and take a look at it on Google maps. The diagrams in books and on apps are great, but real roads rarely look like that! Looking on Google maps will give you a different perspective and help you plan. Use a pen and paper to create your own more accurate diagrams.

Practice your instructions

Driving instructors practice what they are going to say a lot. This is one of the key areas of their training, ensuring that what they say has clarity with no room for misunderstanding. While planning practice what you might say during the lesson. While you are driving yourself start what is known as commentary driving. Speak aloud what you are doing as you drive, including your driving actions, what you can see with regards to other traffic, your evaluations and decision making processes. This will help you identify what might be important to say during the lesson.

Demonstrations in driving lessons

Before supervising your learner driver consider demonstrating first. Use your commentary driving at the same time and allow your learner to observe you drive while listening to the process. Observations do no suit everybody, depending on their learning style. However, they can be a valuable factor in developing confidence in the learner, plus it is good practice for you developing new skills in giving driving lessons as a parent.

Driving lesson timings

As a parent giving driving lessons you can choose how long you will be practising for. There is no need to fill an hour (or be restricted by an hour). We recommend small bitesize driving practice. Remember this is a new skill for you both which can be exhausting.

Driving lesson reflection

Best practice in driver training is that both the instructor and learner driver should reflect on each lesson. Confident Drivers recommends that you reflect both before and after a lesson. Our article about how your emotions influence how much you learn and the success of a driving lesson might help.

Check in to how you are both feeling. How might that affect the lesson? What would your learner driver like to achieve in this lesson? What have they done before that will help them? What do they need to know or to find out that will help them before the lesson?

After your lesson check in again to how you are both feeling. Did you achieve the goal? What went well that you would like to repeat? What would you do differently next time? The coaching section of Confident Drivers includes a reflective log that can be downloaded to help with this.

Confident Drivers Coaching wheel

Download a free copy of our coaching wheel (link below) to help you plan your supervised driving practice. The wheel helps you to identify driving strengths and weaknesses and works well alongside a reflective log. Plus it lists all the driving competencies required to pass your driving test.

Ask your driving instructor for advice

Get in touch with your driving instructor. They will be happy to offer advice to parents giving driving lessons to their students. They wish they could be giving driving lessons and they care about their students driving progress. They may be able to suggest some resources for you to use. Consider paying your driving instructor for some online coaching before lessons to help you. Once driving lessons resume book some lessons and continue with your additional private practice alongside.

Learner driver insurance

You will need learner driver or provisional insurance before you start supervised driving. As with all insurance, it is worth shopping around to get the best deal for you over the time period you need. Here are three suggestions to get you started. These contain affiliate links so will result in a small commission paid to us if you purchase through them.

learner driver insurance
young driver car insurance
Collingwood Learner Driver Insurance

Please help us by sharing this guide with others.  There is a good chance that if you found it useful, so will they.

Sign up for our FREE tool to help you become a more confident driver

If you have a driving test coming up soon you might find our Ultimate Guide to Driving Test Nerves useful.

What others are saying

Read more of our reviews from happy learner drivers on Trustpilot

It's great to have a website offering fantastic techniques to assist with the challenges of driving. The website recognises the fact that learning to drive can be stressful and there are strategies to help with this. The website's name, 'CONFIDENT Drivers' is what a learner is aspiring to be, so it's very positive. The techniques also apply to building general confidence in all walks of life, so useful again. Thank you!

I was so pleased when my instructor signed me up for Confident Driver. I loved the hypnosis sessions & I recently passed first time with one fault. Recommend 100%

Confident drivers has been a really useful tool in changing my attitude to the driving test. I hadn't recognised just how much my negative thoughts about my ability rather than my actual driving ability have been holding me back and putting me off. I particularly liked the quick fix section that gives you strategies to calm down just before the test!

Nervous Drivers Calming Kit

If you would like some self-help stress management resources to help you tackle your driving anxiety and improve driving confidence then our calming kit is created by leading industry experts especially for you.  Access to all the resources is online.

Relaxation
relaxation
Coaching
coaching
Hypnotherapy
hypnotherapy
Mindfulness
mindfulness
Self-Talk
positive self talk
Imagery
Imagery

These plans are created specifically for drivers and learner drivers looking for online solutions to manage driving nerves and anxiety.  We also have a range of group plans created for driving instructors who would like to offer support offroad to their learner drivers, you can find more details on our ADI page.

One Month

£27
  • INCLUDED IN YOUR KIT:
  • Video Guide Questions
  • Solution Flowcharts
  • 9 Stress Management Techniques
  • 5 E-learning Courses on:
  • Stress Management,
  • Driving Confidence,
  • Driving Test Preparation,
  • Driving Test Nerves,
  • Attention and Memory
  • Created by industry experts
  • 1 Month Immediate Access
  • Renew or Upgrade to coaching at anytime

Three Month

£57
  • INCLUDED IN YOUR KIT:
  • Video Guide Questions
  • Solution Flowcharts
  • 9 Stress Management Techniques
  • 5 E-learning Courses on:
  • Stress Management,
  • Driving Confidence,
  • Driving Test Preparation,
  • Driving Test Nerves,
  • Attention and Memory
  • Created by industry experts
  • 3 Month Immediate Access
  • Renew or Upgrade to coaching at anytime

Annual

£97
  • INCLUDED IN YOUR KIT:
  • Video Guide Questions
  • Solution Flowcharts
  • 9 Stress Management Techniques
  • 5 E-learning Courses on:
  • Stress Management,
  • Driving Confidence,
  • Driving Test Preparation,
  • Driving Test Nerves,
  • Attention and Memory
  • Created by industry experts
  • 12 Month Immediate Access
  • Upgrade to coaching at anytime

Driving Confidence Coaching

  • Range of Coaching plans to choose from:
  • 30 min or 60 min coaching sessions
  • Driving Anxiety report
  • Access to Nervous Drivers Calming Kit
  • Drive Calm® e-journal
  • Personalised for your situation
  • Video or Audio Zoom calls
  • VIP In-Person coaching and driving

The Driving Confidence Podcast

driving confidence podcast

We created this podcast for drivers who want to be calm and confident on the road. Whether you are a learner driver, a new driver or have been driving for years, this podcast will help you to beat driving nerves and anxiety and build your driving confidence.

Co-hosted by Kev & Tracey Field, each Driving Confidence podcast episode offers bite-sized information and ideas that are both relatable and achievable to help you manage your driving nerves or anxiety and transform how you feel about driving.

Listen On:

listen on apple podcasts
listen on amazon music
listen on Spotify
listen on podcast addict
listen on google podcasts
listen on stitcher

Articles, Help and Advice for Learner Drivers

Take a browse around our blog for articles written to help learner drivers and driving instructors recognise the most common reasons for experiencing driving nerves and confidence issues.  Each article offers strategies and suggestions that may help you.

Things to do when you can't have driving lessons

Things to do when you can't have driving lessons

Your driving goals are likely to need to be more flexible this year. So how can you keep learning and feel prepared for your driving lessons and test

Read More..

Build your driving confidence

Build your driving confidence

Increasing your belief in your capability to drive will, in turn, increase your driving confidence. So how do we do that? Self-efficacy theory suggests that self-confidence or belief in your abilities is dependent on several key factors...

Read More..

Have you considered hypnotherapy for driving nerves?

Have you considered hypnotherapy for driving nerves?

If you struggle with driving anxiety or driving test nerves you may well have wondered if hypnotherapy can help

Read More..

Are your driving lesson nerves caused by your thoughts?

Are your driving lesson nerves caused by your thoughts?

Learn ways of developing more helpful thinking styles which will help you reduce the signs and symptoms of your nerves and begin to feel more confident.

Read More..
Collingwood Learner Driver Insurance
Drive Calm Journal A twelve week prompt journal for anxious drivers

Drive Calm Journal : A Twelve week Prompt Journal for Anxious Drivers

  • Do you avoid driving whenever possible?
  • Do you feel like the only person who is anxious about driving?
  • Would you like to drive wherever you want, whenever you want?
  • Are you ready to take action to improve your driving confidence?
Follow the prompts, questions, exercises and reflections each week to create your own goal based action plan to work on your driving mindset.  Created by Kev & Tracey Field to help anxious drivers take action and track their progress over twelve weeks based on our unique Drive Calm® System.  
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