Teaching your teenage son or daughter to drive is a very serious undertaking, you'll want them to become safe drivers, and if you have had a hand in their tuition, you might feel better about them driving on their own.

Driving is something we all take for granted; we have probably all got to the stage where we don't give it a second thought. Learning to drive however is a big task and a student can easily start to feel overwhelmed by the amount of information they need to compute, for that reason it is best to split the tuition in to smaller bite-sized segments so as not to feel swamped.

Best place to start driving.

When you first start to drive it is essential you master the simple things first, such as starting the vehicle, driving in a straight line, stopping smoothly and simple left and right turns. There is really no point using the open road at this stage, when most towns have many perfectly good parking lots that are unused out of hours.

Using a parking lot allows you and your teen to gain confidence in each others ability as a student or teacher. If you choose a lot with well defined areas, you can master the left and right turn manoeuvres very quickly.

Driving for the first time.

When you first start to take your son or daughter out to drive, start off with 20-30 minute sessions. You can build up the length of the sessions to an hour or so as their confidence increases or as you want to build in more manoeuvres. More sessions are better than longer sessions, but it is important that you manage to get as much practice, as often as possible. A rule of thumb is to stop the session when the frustration starts to kick in - and believe me it will!

If you stick to the basics at first, the experience for your son or daughter will be all the more rewarding. The main aim is to make them as competent as possible without allowing them to become too overconfident; remember teaching them to become a safer driver will serve them and all other road users well in the future.