Either the drought in my area is making the ragweed noticeably less bad this fall for my son and me, or we are miraculously cured of our seasonal allergies. Usually by September they’re at their peak.
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Maybe he can ask Santa for a new plane for Hallowistmas.
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I’ve watched the Back to the Future trilogy a number of times and never realized that the Twin Pines Mall eventually becomes the Lone Pine Mall because the Delorean knocks a tree over - until my sister just told me. There is a fifty second clip of the process on YouTube.
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It’s quiet in here today.
Some kids are screwed on both sides.
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I wrote a whole paper in high school about how driving at 16 was unsafe and kids shouldn’t get their license until 18. My parents immediately adopted it for my whole family (I am the oldest of 7). I’m still hated for that.
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These days, in the state of Washington at least, there are multiple restrictions on a new 16 y/o driver that didn’t exist when I was 16. For example, you cannot have a teen as a passenger for the first 6 months unless they’re family. There were no such restrictions when I was a kid. My dad had been teaching me to drive since I was about 14, so when I got my license 4 days after turning 16, the first thing I did was pick up my friend and drive around. Those were the good old days.
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4 days after your birthday was impossible in Ohio. You were required to have driver’s ed, which included 18 hours of in-car sessions, of which you had to be driving for 6 of those hours. No more than 3 hours in car / 1 hour driving a day. Plus a bunch of classroom stuff that you could knock out before you turned 16.
So there were private driving schools that would get you through in a week, but that was the best you could do.
But my parents? No, no. They paid for the MUCH CHEAPER driver’s ed through the school district. We had 8 weeks of classroom stuff and THEN the in-car portion started. And the in-car portion was 4 of us (plus the instructor) in the car at a time for 3 hour sessions where we’d drive for 45 minutes. You could miss one one the 8 sessions and then everyone else would drive for 1 hour that day and when you came back you had 3 days where you drove 1 hour and everyone else only drove 40 minutes. The instructor had a detailed sheet tracking everything to the minute.
It took me over 2 months to get my license and I was somewhat lucky with the way the dates fell relative to my birthday.
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Starting in the late 90’s, you could begin driver’s ed at 15.5 and get your license on your 16th birthday in Ohio (if the BMV was open that day).
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Yeah, they made it easier for the young-uns … the change was too late for me to benefit.
I started the classroom portion of driver’s ed before my birthday, but you had to have your temps to do the in-car stuff and you had to be 16 to get your temps. I know my nephews only had to be 15.5.
I did get my temps on my 16th birthday, which at the time was the earliest you could do that.
Excerpt from one of Jaspess’s school psychology textbooks:
You can become a more effective interviewer of children by learning about their current interests. Here are some ideas about how to do so:
- Gather information about current television shows, video games, and other popular media.
- Talk with parents.
- Visit toy stores.
- Look at children’s books.
- Visit day care centers, playgrounds, and schools to observe children in their natural environments.
Familiarity with children’s interests will help facilitate rapport and understanding.
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My manager has 2 sons and one didn’t get his license until he was 18 1/2 and the other is 17 and still doesn’t have his license. Which I’d understand if they lived somewhere urban with good transit. But they live in suburban Phoenix. My manager blocks time on her calendar every afternoon so she can pick him up from high school. That’s crazy to me.
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IFYQ. There’s no school bus? WTF?
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I’ve known kids who weren’t interested in driving when they first could
Dunno, never asked.
I’m not saying that it’s wrong to wait until well after you’re 16 to get a license (or never get a license at all) Just that it’s different than my experience.
My understanding from friends with teens is that it’s the norm now that kids are not interested in driving. Where are they going to go? Kids don’t socialize in person like we did, they primarily socialize online, and there aren’t all that many free or cheap third spaces for kids to congregate in anymore.
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That makes sense. As a bit of a transit nerd myself, it’s nice to see a reduction of reliance on cars. I just never thought phones and social media would be the reason.
Probably also the kids have just grown up far more reliant on their parents than in the past and don’t view it as a bad thing / aren’t clamoring for independence.
I grew up in the “go play outside and don’t come home until the porch light comes on” era.
Now I worry about my daughter walking 0.1 miles to the neighbor’s house. She was really nervous to wait at the Target Customer Service Desk for them to retrieve the online order while I ran back to retrieve the one item I forgot to put on the list.
My friends & I were sent to the store 1.5 miles away to run errands for our mothers at that age.
So while Mini Me is not yet driving age, it’s not hard to imagine that she might not be as eager for her license as I was given all the ways that I am already observing that she is less independent than I was for a given age.
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We weren’t in a hurry for our kids to get their licenses. The first took drivers ed right around 16 but one of the texting and driving videos scared her and she didn’t want to drive. Hubby was a SAH parent & free to drive her if she couldn’t take the bus. When she was a senior, almost 18, we needed her to drive bc the kids had things at the same time in different parts of town. So she got her license then.
The younger one had confirmed ADHD and again I wasn’t in a hurry. But she had riding lessons and a job at the barn about 45 min away so she got a license and a (used) car when she was 17.
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