Sunday, January 31, 2016

Helping Children Overcome Their Fear of Driving

If your children were (or are) excited to get behind the wheel, this may sound strange, but there are many teens who are actually afraid of driving. The exact reasons for why some children are hesitant to take on this challenge aren’t always clear. It can be especially confusing for parents when siblings and friends are chomping at the bit to drive.


Learning how to drive in most parts of the United States is an important life skill.

There aren’t that many places that a person can live and not need to know how to drive outside of the major cities.

Even though public transportation is more common today than it was 10 or 20 years ago, it still isn’t the preferred method of transit for most people.

That isn’t to say that if your children won’t be able to function if they never learn to drive. They can thrive and have happy and healthy lives as long as they’re willing to accept the limitations that come along with the decision to leave the driving to someone else.

Of course, there are always at least two sides to every decision. With the downside of not learning in mind, there are also some upsides that you may want to consider before being overly concerned about this decision.

The first question to ask is whether someone is making a fully informed decision or if they’re acting out of fear. For the person who has made a conscious choice to not drive for reasons other than fear, there may be little that you can or even should do to persuade them otherwise.

Learning how does not mean that one will be required to drive either. However, having at least a rudimentary understanding of the process can come in handy in the event of an emergency, for example.

One other point that you might consider with children who don’t think it’s necessary to learn to drive, but aren’t afraid of it, is how they’ll get around in the event that there isn’t adequate public transportation. Just because your children decide not to drive doesn’t mean you should be the family driver forever. You have to decide how much chauffeuring you are willing to do, set your boundaries, and stick with them.

What about teens who are truly afraid of driving? How do you help those children?

This isn’t about forcing people with deep fears to do something before they’re ready. If your children have an extreme fear or phobia about driving you might consider getting professional help. But for children who are intimidated about driving, there is hope and you can help.

This is a good time for you and your children to check in with your Internal Guidance System (IGS). Not only can this help reveal the reasons behind the trepidation for the teens, it can also help you understand any underlying fear or stress they have. By tapping into you IGS, you can also gain a better perspective, have more confidence in your support methods, maintain an increased level of patience, and even be aware when your children might want to bow out and ask for help from another adult, professional or otherwise.

When you recognize that fear is simply an emotion, you can acknowledge it and move on. This is the first step in helping someone who’s nervous about anything. Telling children there’s nothing to be afraid of isn’t helpful. Car accidents do happen and people do get hurt and killed while driving. The fact that your children are tentative about learning to drive may be a sign of their maturity – they see the inherent dangers and don’t have the mistaken belief that they’re immune to them.

Rather than discouraging the fear, you can use this awareness to help your children be better and safer drivers. Addressing the specific aspects that scare them can be helpful. Allowing them to practice at their own pace and not requiring that they do it at the same rate as an older sibling or their friends can also go a long way towards developing their skills. With better skills and more practice, the level of fear generally diminishes.

Find times and places to practice that give your student drivers plenty of room to make decisions. Let them take their time. Be sure that you’re centered before going out on any practice drives. If you start out anxious, stressed, or tired, your drivers will pick up on that energy and won’t have the most positive experiences.

Verbally reviewing the procedures before putting the car into gear is another good way to ingrain the habits, especially if your children are auditory learners. Many people who are fearful of driving turn out to be very visual. There is so much stimulation and so many things to see, it feels overwhelming.  If this is the case, try to have shorter sessions and control the environment as much as possible. Then, gradually introduce busier, more challenging, and more stressful driving situations.

Given time and understanding, your teens may actually grow to love driving. Even if driving isn’t a favorite pastime, you can help them get over a fear and learn an important life skill. By successfully conquering this fear, not only will they learn to drive, they’ll learn that they can handle other scary situations that come up in the future.

For more, please visit www.SharonBallantine.com.

Sunday, January 3, 2016

Settling in For a Long Winter's Nap

Clement Clark Moore’s famous poem, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, was a tale of how the speaker and his wife had just settled in for a long winter’s nap before he was startled out of his bed by Santa Claus. Even though Christmas and the Winter Solstice have both passed and nights are therefore getting shorter, your body is still hunkering in for the winter. For teenagers, this can be doubly as difficult.


Parents typically have the same schedule with the exception of a few weeks’ vacation every year. During the work/school week, the entire family likely shares this schedule -- you get up, get ready, help your kids get ready, and then everyone goes about their day.

Weekends are a different story. Parents still tend to get up -- they have things to attend to that didn’t get done during the week and still have a family to take care of. Kids on the other hand, especially teenagers, tend to view the weekend as prime time for a long winter’s nap. That’s true whether it is January or June.

This can be quite frustrating for parents who want the family to do things together. It’s equally bothersome when weekend chores aren’t being done, homework is left waiting, and everyone else’s schedule is pushed aside for the hibernating bear.

Not a bad analogy, is it? Try waking a teenager on a Saturday morning if they aren’t ready. Once awake, the bear is famished as if their sleep could’ve been counted in days rather than hours.

As a parent, this can put you in a difficult position. If you force you teen awake before the hibernation period is over, you’re likely to have a Grizzly on your hands rather than a cute Panda or Koala. On the other hand, should you let the bear sleep as long as they want? You’ve probably been told that children should stick to a consistent schedule. You might also have been told that your children are short on sleep. So what do you do?

According to scientists and health practitioners, teenagers are indeed short on sleep.

“Adolescents are notorious for not getting enough sleep. The average amount of sleep that teenagers get is between 7 and 7 ¼ hours. However, they need between 9 and 9 ½ hours (studies show that most teenagers need exactly 9 ¼ hours of sleep).”
~ Nationwide Children’s Hospital
Hopefully this information will allay the fear you might have over your teen sleeping their lives away. If your teen is sluggish every morning, then it’s possible they aren’t getting enough sleep. The weekends may be a critical time for their growing body to get much-needed rest.

On the other hand, it might be that your teen isn’t scheduling their time well enough to get the appropriate amount of sleep. You might want to look into what’s causing this lack of sleep.

Is your teen up late doing homework? Do they have a part-time job that’s impacting their schedule? Or do they participate in sports or other extra-curricular activities that keep them out late? If this is a temporary scheduling issue, it might not be a major concern, but it might be healthy to consider whether or not your teen is trying to take on too much.

There may be another culprit at play here.  Most teens today spend a significant part of their time with their electronics. They use their phones, tablets, and computers for homework, as a way to connect socially, and for distraction. Rather than be forced to have phone conversations tethered to a wall phone, today kids take their phones everywhere with them. That means they’re staring at those little screens and the light they project for hours at a time.

The human body is designed to respond to light. Originally, this was the light of the sun. A rhythm based on when the sun rises and sets was developed. The advent of artificial lights allowed humanity to extend daytime activities later into the evening. The result was that people began to get less sleep, but those lights could be turned off easily. Now your teen isn’t just using electronic devices in the evening, but is using them for extended periods of time right before going to bed.

“… Careful studies have shown that even our small electronic devices emit sufficient light to miscue the brain and promote wakefulness. As adults, we are subject to these influences and our children are particularly susceptible. “
~ National Sleep Foundation
This means that even if your teen is reading before bed, the electronic device they might be reading it on isn’t preparing them for sleep. Just as your parents used to admonish you to turn the lights out, you may need to remind your teen to turn off their electronic devices in order to get a good night’s rest.
The bottom line is that there’s no need to panic if your teenager takes an occasional long winter’s nap, but if sleeping long hours on the weekends is a constant occurrence or is impacting the family schedule, it might be time to check into the cause of their hibernation.

For more, please visit www.SharonBallantine.com.