We are still trying to teach Neeto how to drive.  Where we live you can either have the student drive for 100 hours and take the test or go through a drivers education course.  Most of the homeschoolers we know choose the drivers education course, I suppose because they are scared to death at the prospect of sitting in the passenger seat with their child at the wheel.  I also suppose it's because their children are impatient to get their license.  There are even parents who can't wait for their young teen to get their license because then they can send them to town on errands.

We chose to do the 100 hours.  I don't see any reason to put my daughter in a classroom that may or may not actually teach drivers ed among students who are more concerned about their freedom than understanding the responsibility that driving is.  (As to what is taught in the classroom, I saw a news report once about a teacher who just popped in a movie and another report where the teacher was combining their version of sex education with driving.)

It is interesting the different reactions Dear Man and I have as we ride about with our daughter.  I'm either so calm I could fall asleep or hollering that Neeto could have killed us all.  Not exactly relaxing but I figure it's real life learning.  One day she will have to drive with her own children in the car and they will be hollering from time to time.  Dear Man on the other hand takes everything very calmly, but asks questions the whole time. 

My reaction is about the same when Dear Man is driving.  I'm asleep or gripping the door handle sucking in my breath.  When Dear Man is forced to ride with me he tries to sleep and pretend I'm not there.  He says my driving makes him sick.  

I once knew a woman who had told me the story of her reaction to her husband's driving.  She was forever hollering at him to look out and one day he finally asked her what she saw that he didn't see.  She replied, "Death!"  

It takes a lot of trust to get into a car with someone else behind the wheel.  For the most part you don't think about it but then there's that person you meet and you realize with a queasy sort of feeling that you don't trust them with your life.  No way would you allow your child or yourself to ride with them.  It amazes me how many parents are hurt by the fact that you don't trust their child with your own child's life yet they would much rather not ride with their child.  Those that do somehow believe their child is always a safe driver whether they are in the car or not but they can't even trust that their child will feed the dog.

Driving is a responsibility, a privelege, not a right.  Neeto takes it very seriously, knowing that her life and those riding with her could be in jeopardy.  I don't just choose to believe it is so, I know it is so by the way she talks, how she frets when she realizes that she made a mistake, and how she has not been in any major hurry to get her license.  She talks about the day she can just get in the car and go shopping with her sister but she doesn't view it as a means of freedom from her parents. 

I won't expect everyone to trust my daughter simply because she has a license.  Trust her because you know that she truly cares about the lives she is responsible for.  Trust her because she doesn't view driving as a party on wheels.  Trust her because everything else about her life is something you can trust.