Teen Driver: Helping Your Kid Drive and Stay Alive

By Lee Simon

Dont just sit there! Do something to insure your teen driver is driving safely. Get this book and discuss it with your teen driver. Share your experience. Show him or her that you care about how he or she drives. This book guides the discussion, prevents you from feeling guilty about not knowing what to say, and changes your teen drivers attitude about driving and be much safer. Help keep your kid be alive at 25.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 15, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453593981

Lee Simon

Lee Simon is the published author of six books. This is his fourth book that deals with young people. He was a school teacher for 23 years; his wife Anne is an independent school principal. Their combined experience brings a great deal of insight into what is going on with kids and their fascination with, and even addition to electronic social media. Together they have taken in 20 kids over the course of ten years in a special therapeutic foster care program. Lee knows kids and he knows social media. This book will help you deal with the issues.

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Copyright © 2010 by Lee Simon.

ISBN:          Ebook                                      978-1-4535-9398-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was created in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

Introduction

Parents Section

Teen Driver Section

Parent and Teen Section

For parents and teen drivers to read

Introduction

Just owning this book, without actively using it, will not save your teen driver’s life. But, using it pro-actively will change the gamble from a bad gamble to a reasonable one. Using this book is not just about reading it. You and your teen driver will both read it. Then you’ll talk about what you’ve read.

Some of the sections will be read by both you and your teen. Some will be read only by you, as they are intended for the adult, as guidance for the adult. Some of the sections will be read by only the teen driver, as they are specific to him/her.

Probably the most important part of this book is not in the book. It will be in the discussions you will have with your child as a result of the readings in it each of you will do. And, guess what? You, the parent, will benefit from these discussions and improve your driving as well.

There are many topics covered herein. No one of them is more important than any other. Each is a foundation block to keeping your teen driver alive. The over-all approach here is the idea known as Defensive Driving.

Some people think of Defensive Driving as a technique for good driving. It’s more than that; it’s really an attitude in the mind of the driver. The one, single, simple goal of this book is to change the attitude of your teen driver about his/her driving. Everything we do in life we approach with an attitude toward it. It may be doing the dishes, or doing school homework, or trying to get a job, or anything else.

This is especially true of driving a motor vehicle, because doing that is not only a complex activity, but also a dangerous one. Every time we get in a vehicle and turn the key, be it a car, a truck, or a motorcycle, we bring an attitude toward the task of driving. There is a wide range of attitudes a teen driver might bring to it. Some of them are mature attitudes, some are not. Most teen drivers bring only the immature attitudes. This is where the trouble begins.

Most teen drivers have had a Driver Education class in high school. They have also taken and passed, or will soon take, a state driver’s license exam. They know the rules of the road. That is not what this book is about. Most teen drivers have had, or soon will have a course in driving technique, usually called Behind the Wheel instruction. They know, or soon will know, how to drive the vehicle competently. That is not what this book is about.

The unique aspect of this book is that it addresses the issue of preserving your teen driver’s life from a totally different perspective. Not technique. Not competency. Not knowledge of the driving rules. No, instead, this book will guide your teen driver to having a different attitude toward driving. The attitude this book will present, and having presented it, will teach, is an attitude of driving defensively.

More than that is needed, however. Every Driver’s Ed class has a section about Defensive Driving. What is needed, and what this book contains, is a very practical, down to earth exploration of the temptations, the challenges, and the risks that are built in to the teen driver’s world. This is not a book that preaches. That does not work with young drivers. This is not a book that simply presents. Plain information is not enough to change an attitude. This book takes each topic and explores it in depth, from the point of view of both the parent and the teen drivers. It presents challenging questions for discussion by parent and teen. It offers suggestions, approaches and insights. From these you will arrive at the answers that will serve both you and your teen driver.

This book expects that your child, like most normal kids, has a tendency to think they know it all already; has a block against being told what to do; wants to prove to everybody what a great driver he/she is already. Hey, we did too when we were that age. But driving is getting more dangerous, not less, and those attitudes can get your child killed!

This book does not ignore those attitudes. It does not judge them to be wrong. It simply accepts them and then moves through them. That is possible