Lessons in teaching

After much procrastination, my daughter Grace sat and passed her learner’s driving licence. But now comes the part that most parents dread — driving lessons.

What makes this challenging for Grace and me is that she’s learning in a manual car, after being handed down her grandma’s hatchback as my mum isn’t allowed to drive anymore.

Luckily for us, the hatchback has plenty of dents and scrapes on the body and tyres — so a few more aren’t going to make a difference.

To give you an understanding of what I’m working with, despite having a mother who is a motoring writer, Grace has no understanding of how a car works.

The only reason she’s keen on learning to drive now is that I recently had a BMW 6 Series GT that I could move backwards or forward from the key fob. I was demonstrating this at a family gathering where Grace sat in the driver’s seat, not touching the wheel or pedals.

After moving the car up and down the quiet road for a few metres either way, Grace exited the car and said, “driving is easy”.

With renewed interest, she then gained her licence. So on a quiet Sunday afternoon, we headed to a nearby empty carpark. Her first question was “How do first, second, third, fourth and fifth gear work?” And, yes, she did pass maths.

As we could move only from first to second gears in the carpark, we headed to the large cemetery with a speed limit of 30km/h and plenty of roads. It was also “dead” quiet and I knew we weren’t in any “grave” danger.

Wish me luck for our next lesson.