I tried to teach my wife to drive a manual transmission vehicle. MY old Datsun D) pickup truck. The gears grinding were too much for me and I thought cussing my wife out was wrong so this is what I did...... I drove her and my ten-speed bike to a school about 2 miles from my house on a Saturday. Parked the truck in the empty parking lot. Took out my bike and rode home. When she was confident enough, she drove home.
I taught my ex-wife and my four kids to drive. My ex-wife was the most challenging. Her dad had tried, but they ended up in a fountain, so they gave up. To make it tougher she had trouble with right and left and I had a stick shift VW bug. My dad started me in a vacant parking lot. It's the only way to go. School parking lots on the weekend are great, so that's where I started all of them out.
When my oldest daughter was perhaps six years old, I decided to coach her phone etiquette and how to ask parents to speak with her young friends. We practiced, but she was very hesitant; I convinced her to call. Naturally we mis-dialed the number and an very aggressive, rude male shouted that she had the wrong number and slammed the phone down on her; she burst into tears. Now I have a supremely self-confident, wonderful in every way teenager who is still quite hesitant to call anyone she doesn't know very well on the phone.
Actually TTM- I convinced Mrs Cap to buy a manual Honda Civic as her first car while we were still dating. I drove it back from the person we bought it off, and then left her to get used to it and went home. I got a teary call about two hours later, saying it took her ten minutes to get through one intersection as it was on a slight slope, and she kept rolling back or stalling and panicking, and she's just spent all of this money on a car she can't drive, etc etc. Needless to say, she's now been driving manual cars for ten years now and thanks me for forcing her into it!
Ha! Yup, a sloped intersection is what got me to that parking lot. It drove me nuts hearing my gears grinding.
I have one that didn't involve my kids but a friend of mine's kids. The church that I go to (well, at least when I'm in town) is fairly large but it started out as a fairly small church that met in the performing arts center of a local high school. This center could probably hold 200...maybe 300 people. Well, my friend was an usher during this time and one of his duties was to collect the offering. He was trying to teach his son about service to others and had him handle the offering pouch. All of the rows except for one just required the young man (maybe 5 years old?) to hand the pouch to the last person in line and the collect it from the last person in the next row. The only row this wasn't necessarily true was the first row which had a fairly wide space in front of it between it and the stage. Well, the young man decided to take the pouch and just put it in front of each congregant in that row. If they didn't put anything in it he started to shake it to prod them to put something in it!
I taught a couple of people how to drive stick so far... I just put em on a hill and make them drive there. It's how my brother taught me. We were near 5th ave in Brooklyn going uphill on a narrow one way with like 200 cars behind us. He turned to me and said get behind the wheel and drive. He explained a little, I burned a lot of rubber so as to not roll backwards.. I almost hit like 10 pedestrians but in the end... I learned and now I love driving stick.
Do I take it that anyone with a license, (including people who gained their license on an automatic), can drive a manual gearbox without having to take an appropriate test? Anyway, my dad was a driving instructor for about 7 years and gave me lessons for about a month before realising how much of a mistake it was. I then was given lessons by someone else and it was much, MUCH easier. I also tried to give my daughter lessons and learned the same lesson. If you take my advice NEVER give driving lessons to a member of your family. It's nearly always a disaster and will likely set them back at LEAST a month.
Ahh, the young can be the best salespeople for just that lack of awareness. Last year during Election Day, my 7 year old son, who has severe Aspergers came in with me chanting Obama! Obama! The election workers really didn't know what to make of it. So while I was getting stuck with our electronic voting booths, they lead Conor outside and he started an impromptu Obama rally...
Me too! I think I may have been closer to 10, but still. I also learned to drive a tractor by the time I was 13. I would like to report that I was therefore an above-average driver when I got my license at 16, but...not so much.