Automobiles and teens

[sharie001]

Things to teach your kids things about automobiles (don't assume they know or will use comon sense, lol) like .......

The importance of maintence, and the cost if they don't do maintence, such as brakes, oil changes, don't drive with warning lights on take it to be repaired the instant those lights come on (or they could be walking).

If they get stuck in sand or mud don't keep spinning tires they will only get more stuck. If stuck in sand then pour water on it to harden it around the tires. If stuck in mud put something like tree limbs, cardboard, whatever is handy in front and behind the tires so they can get some traction, if all else fails call a friend with a truck to pull them out instead of a tow truck or getting more stuck.

I don't know much about driving in snow or ice, except that tire chains are handy to have, along with knowing the drive gears in your auto, and ice and snow melt when you pour water on them if you get stuck.

If you are riding around with a bunch of other teens in your vehicle especially after midnight you might as well put a neon sign on your vehicle that says officer please pull me over.

[drjohnson]

I'm thinking that when my twins start driving, we should buy them a Smart car. There won't be room for any friends, and probably not enough power to speed. ;}

[sharie001]

drjohnson,

Lol, I had the same/similar idea of a car without much power for speed. Then I realized that only limited them on the interstate and some highways which may result in getting them run over around here, it would have zero affect on them speeding in slower zones (15-45mph zones), lol.

Knowing and verifying where they are consistantly seems to be a little more effective for my daughter. If you want to know where your kids have been without doing the family locator thing on their cell phones (you can use this to estimate their speed as well, lol) just get a gps with an expansion slot to add extra memory to it, and hide it somewhere they wouldn't look in the car. Take it out every couple days and check out where the gps says they were. If you really want to get sofisticated you can get two garmin rino gps/radios that will locate them within 10 miles (I think they go up to 10 miles).

[jill921]

LOL - now that's an idea. Sounds like a job for the Mission Impossible Team - Ha!

[michellea]

dd just got her permit. She is much better at lacrosse than at driving! Wow - it is scarey. Can't even imagine her out on her own.

[majorv]

Mar 2, 2010 23:16:15 GMT -5 sharie001 said:

drjohnson,

...Knowing and verifying where they are consistantly seems to be a little more effective for my daughter. If you want to know where your kids have been without doing the family locator thing on their cell phones (you can use this to estimate their speed as well, lol) just get a gps with an expansion slot to add extra memory to it, and hide it somewhere they wouldn't look in the car. Take it out every couple days and check out where the gps says they were. If you really want to get sofisticated you can get two garmin rino gps/radios that will locate them within 10 miles (I think they go up to 10 miles).

We had to get a gps tracker after we gave our son a car to use. He was putting about 40 miles on the car on school days and over 100 miles in a weekend! School is only 10 miles RT. We figured out that our son likes to ferry his friends different places, and his sense of direction is such that he would take the longest, most indirect, route wherever he went.

He did tell us he like to drive around trying to find where places were. We never would've figured everything out by asking him though.

[healthy11]

Having to pay for the gas they use is a good way to reduce the "excessive mileage" teens like to put on cars (or at least they get reimbursed from their friends for the fuel.)

I have kept a "log" on all of our cars ever since my son got his license, and when my son uses a vehicle, I record the number of miles he starts with and ends with. We subtracted the number of miles it was round-trip to high school, but he paid for everything else. Even now, when he's home from college on the weekends, OR during the weeks we allow him to have our old car at school, he has to pay for fuel....I'd like to charge him for insurance and other maintenance items, too, but without a regular job, that's harder to do. (And when he recently told us that he wanted to apply for a part-time job as a grocery-delivery driver near his college, we said NO WAY because the last thing we want is for him to put more mileage on the car and risk getting more tickets!)

[jisp]

Our eldest (a girl) and cars just don't seem to mix. It is a combination of bad car-karma and that she never seems to know where the ends of the car are when she is in a parking lot She is actually a good driver. But she has cost us a bloody fortunate with the car. As a result we have decided that we will not allow our boys to drive under the age of 18.

That being said my older son (age 19) has had his learners permit for almost 9 months and he has yet to get behind the wheel of a car. He is very comfortable taking public transportation and biking and has expressed ZERO interest in learning how to drive. I am starting to get worried that he might never drive. Interestingly this child had a bad EEG many years ago. And there has always been concern there is some seizure like activity in his brain. He was very very tired and saw the movie AVATAR for the second time and insisted that there were certain scenes that were in the movie when we saw it the first time but were not in the movie when he saw it the second time. He insists that he did not fall asleep. So that raised the seizure issue again, and that makes us wonder if that is one reason why he is showing so little interest in driving.

My youngest got his permit a few weeks ago and has also not yet been behind the wheel of a car. But I know he is interested so it will happen one of these days.

[empeg1]

Best of all, do not buy them a car at all. My oldest bought her first car at 19 with her own money.
My youngest will be 18 before she will have her license. She will drive my car when I do not need it. Then too, if she goes to 4 year college after graduation, she does not need a car. I certainly did not have one. If she must commute to a cc, then someone I know and love will have to buy her own car! Guess who will be working full time this summer?

[bros]

Mar 22, 2010 14:41:20 GMT -5 jisp said:

Our eldest (a girl) and cars just don't seem to mix. It is a combination of bad car-karma and that she never seems to know where the ends of the car are when she is in a parking lot She is actually a good driver. But she has cost us a bloody fortunate with the car. As a result we have decided that we will not allow our boys to drive under the age of 18.

That being said my older son (age 19) has had his learners permit for almost 9 months and he has yet to get behind the wheel of a car. He is very comfortable taking public transportation and biking and has expressed ZERO interest in learning how to drive. I am starting to get worried that he might never drive. Interestingly this child had a bad EEG many years ago. And there has always been concern there is some seizure like activity in his brain. He was very very tired and saw the movie AVATAR for the second time and insisted that there were certain scenes that were in the movie when we saw it the first time but were not in the movie when he saw it the second time. He insists that he did not fall asleep. So that raised the seizure issue again, and that makes us wonder if that is one reason why he is showing so little interest in driving.

My youngest got his permit a few weeks ago and has also not yet been behind the wheel of a car. But I know he is interested so it will happen one of these days.

Take him to a neurologist for a new EEG if you are worried.

My EEGs are always rather odd. One guy has been interpreting most of mine since I was 6. He has found them always rather odd. Especially since the activity is spread all over the brain, and my seizures take place in the occipital lobe (except when I lose consciousness, which is when it spreads out into my brain a bit)

One neurologist I had (One who specialized in seizures) said my unusual brain activity was something she called "genetic markers of epilepsy" in my brain. (I think this is what she referred to - journals.lww.com/neurotodayonline/Fulltext/2009/02190/Genetic_Marker_Identified_for_Rolandic_Seizures.2.aspx but now they know I don't have Rolandic Epilepsy, since I still have seizures)

The epileptologist I used to go to said that there was no unusual activity at all. (Which I believe is totally wrong. I had an EEG 7/16/07 from the usual hospital that does it, they said the activity was rather unusual, then I had a video EEG 8/3/07-8/13/07, and they barely detected any activity)

My brain is odd.

[jisp]

Bros, Shortly after we got our son's EEG results I asked the neurologist this question,"If you pulled 100 random healthy people off the street and gave them an EEG how many would show what my son's EEG showed?" She didn't have a firm figure for me but it was definitely not 0%. EEGs are very crude tools. And it is unclear how useful or informative most EEGs are for people who are not having more obvious seizures. We have talked about doing future neurological work ups for our son. The neuropsychologist was encouraging us to do this given that my son's short term memory and processing speeds have decreased each time we test him. But we know one of the few young hot-shot neurosurgeons in the country. And we asked him what he suggested. His advice was to observe and not do any imaging or additional studies. But just monitor our son's memory from time to time. The reality, he said, is even if they were to find something that was causing this sort of thing, it is unlikely there would be any treatment for it.

So we observe. The avatar thing was an isolated event. Our son was traveling and exhausted from taking a rather complicated trip entirely on his own. If it happens again we will make note of it.

[majorv]

Interesting, jisp. Our daugther only made it 2 months after getting her license before she had an accident...her fault. Her second accident was also her fault. Both were minor, but between that and the speeding ticket, her insurance is higher than our son's...who hasn't had an accident yet (knock on wood!) and just recently got his first speeding ticket. He's had his license for over a year.

[bros]

Mar 22, 2010 19:06:31 GMT -5 jisp said:

Bros, Shortly after we got our son's EEG results I asked the neurologist this question,"If you pulled 100 random healthy people off the street and gave them an EEG how many would show what my son's EEG showed?" She didn't have a firm figure for me but it was definitely not 0%. EEGs are very crude tools. And it is unclear how useful or informative most EEGs are for people who are not having more obvious seizures. We have talked about doing future neurological work ups for our son. The neuropsychologist was encouraging us to do this given that my son's short term memory and processing speeds have decreased each time we test him. But we know one of the few young hot-shot neurosurgeons in the country. And we asked him what he suggested. His advice was to observe and not do any imaging or additional studies. But just monitor our son's memory from time to time. The reality, he said, is even if they were to find something that was causing this sort of thing, it is unlikely there would be any treatment for it.

So we observe. The avatar thing was an isolated event. Our son was traveling and exhausted from taking a rather complicated trip entirely on his own. If it happens again we will make note of it.

Of course EEGs are crude, they are reading through the skull.

Monitor how he is when he is drowsy.

[vickilyn32]

DD's car would not start a few weeks ago, so I gave her my jumper cables to keep in her car untill we bought her her own set. We bought them saturday and saturday night she was out with friends when another guy friend stopped them to ask if anyone had jumper cables. DD was the only girl there, and the only one with the cables in her car. It was funny that the day we got them, she had to use them. I wonder how many of the boys will have them next time LOL.
Jumper cables, a bottle of water, wire coat hanger and a chain were always in my car when I was a teen, my father made sure of it and I used them all at one time or another. I have made sure they are in my kids cars as well. (and a phone book now since you cant stop at a phone booth anymore)

[sharie001]

jisp,

You could get her some backup sensors and put them on the front and the back of her vehicle, lol.

My daughter, who is an honor student, couldn't find her way around the block, her sense of direction is about as sharp as a bowling ball. She has lots of redeeming qualities but geography/directions and driving do not fall under those qualities. I refuse to ride in an auto with her driving. On the other hand I would ride any where in any vehicle with "denis the menis" my adventurous crazy child. You could drop my son off in the middle of nowhere and he'd find his way home before you made it home.