What my sons have taught me?

Today as I was taking DS1 out for his 3rd round of driving lessons, I realized how much my sons had all taught me.

Patience - I never would have thought I would feel comfortable teaching one of my sons to drive, but today I realized it is not that big of a deal. I am ok with slow starts, hard breaking, forgetting to change gears after doing y turns and all. Maybe it is because I can see myself doing the same things. But I know this patiences as he learns a new skill is the same patience I have obtained over the years as my boys wanted to help me cook in the kitchen or how to overcome hard math problems which seem intuitive to me.

Empathy - I can totally feel how nervous he is as he learns a new skill and wants to do well. But I can also help him through the blunders and help him to understand how to do better. Partially because I too have done these things and more to the point because I can understand how hard the process is when you want to please your parent.

Adventure - sitting in the passenger sit and knowing you have no control as your child takes his first steep, gravel, winding hill. Knowing you have no control of the vehicle and trusting you'll be ok and won't hit a tree.

Trust - knowing you can trust the son to go up the hill and knowing that he'll let you know if he thinks he is having problems and needs your help. Ok, so I've seen how he drives the neighbors ATV and the fact I've also allowed him to back the car off ramps after working on it helps. But I do trust his judgement and feel that he is becoming a wonderful, grown up, young man, who did not ask to learn to drive until he felt he was ready versus doing what others were doing just because that is the thing to do.

Now, did everything go ok on this road of driving. Overall yes. He did a great job learning how to do Y turns. He is getting good about parking (we practiced this before church as he drove around the lot pulling into and out of parking places.) How to change from D to a lower gear as you go up a steep, gravel hill so you don't lose traction.

Did he make mistakes yes. He forgot to put it in D after backing out of a neighbors drive and we almost ended up in a ditch. He also cut it a little close as we went over our one lane bridge. But he also realized what he did and how to correct the situation so he wouldn't do it again. And did I panic, No. That was a big one for me. I did learn something from my years of driving. Don't yell at the driver and don't try and take a steering wheel out of their hands.

Overall I'd say lesson 3 went well and who knows after a few more hours of driving our gravel road I might be ready to handle the paved roads. At this point he knows he's not ready and I don't want to be driving them at 10 miles and hour which is as comfortable as he feels to take the car.

Oh, and on good/bad work news, I have my Feb days approved from the 2nd job, so I won't have to make that decision until March now. They didn't approve all those days, but I have another 5 weeks to go before I'll have to make that choice now.

-Myrtle, the one whose hair may go grey sooner now that I have a child learning to drive.