Dear Sandy,
My16 year old son just got his license. He's a very good driver but unlike my 18 year old daughter when she was first driving, he is very confident in his driving ability despite his relative lack of driving experience.
My daughter attended your skid school for teens and we feel it was very good for her. We'd like my son to attend as well, but are a little concerned that it could contribute to his already strong sense of confidence. Do you think this program would be beneficial to him and not encourage him to become over confident?
Sandy answers:
I've been thinking about your email for a couple of days. This issue is the Gordian knot of my career. I can teach them how to miss the deer, but to do so I have to teach them how to access 100% of the car's potential for avoidance, which provides them with skills that might very well be applied in the unpredictable and uneven manner that is characteristic of those years when the brain is evolving into its adult state.
I re-read an article, "The New Science of the Teenage Brain" from the October 2011 National Geographic, and from which I shall quote freely, which has rather an upbeat take on this process, They are saying that adolescence isn't a problem; that the "...angst, idiocy, haste, impulsiveness, selfishness, reckless bungling" that we see don't characterize adolescence. They are just what we notice because they are so annoying or put our children in danger. The unique characteristic of humans is that we are an evolving species, and the proof that the negatives that we attach to this period of transformation are not in fact dysfunctional traits is that they would never have survived natural selection if they were. The article's "adaptive adolescent theory" casts adolescents as "exquisitely sensitive, highly adaptable creatures wired almost perfectly for the job of moving from the safety of home into the complicated world outside."
Laurence Steinberg, developmental psychologist specializing in adolescence at Temple University, points out that even the biggest risk-takers, 14- to- 17-year-olds, use the same basic cognitive strategies that adults do. They reason their way through problems as well as adults, and fully recognize that they are mortal. So why do they take more chances? He says it's because they weigh the risk vs. reward differently; they value the reward more than adults do. This sounds like what you're afraid of with your son. He presents as skilled, capable and confident, but you fear that in an unforgiving environment like driving, where he is cast into a maelstrom where everything is happening at 90 ft/sec, there is no natural selection process in his thousands-of-years-old DNA that provides him with instinctual wisdom in this brave new environment of our own recent creation, where trial-and-error is not an option.
I can't make this decision for you, but I can wholeheartedly support whatever you choose, because you know him best and you know what we do. I will say that if you bring him, come with him, take part in all the discussions, talk to him between drills, insist that he get every single thing he can out of the training. One of our instructors almost lost his life the second day he had his license. Another is an ER doctor. Another is a police officer who suffered a TBI when hit by a car in the line of duty. They all send the right message, but we both know that that doesn't mean it will be heard. But I will say you are asking exactly the right question at exactly the right time.
Best Regards,
Sandy Stevens
My16 year old son just got his license. He's a very good driver but unlike my 18 year old daughter when she was first driving, he is very confident in his driving ability despite his relative lack of driving experience.
My daughter attended your skid school for teens and we feel it was very good for her. We'd like my son to attend as well, but are a little concerned that it could contribute to his already strong sense of confidence. Do you think this program would be beneficial to him and not encourage him to become over confident?
Sandy answers:
I've been thinking about your email for a couple of days. This issue is the Gordian knot of my career. I can teach them how to miss the deer, but to do so I have to teach them how to access 100% of the car's potential for avoidance, which provides them with skills that might very well be applied in the unpredictable and uneven manner that is characteristic of those years when the brain is evolving into its adult state.
I re-read an article, "The New Science of the Teenage Brain" from the October 2011 National Geographic, and from which I shall quote freely, which has rather an upbeat take on this process, They are saying that adolescence isn't a problem; that the "...angst, idiocy, haste, impulsiveness, selfishness, reckless bungling" that we see don't characterize adolescence. They are just what we notice because they are so annoying or put our children in danger. The unique characteristic of humans is that we are an evolving species, and the proof that the negatives that we attach to this period of transformation are not in fact dysfunctional traits is that they would never have survived natural selection if they were. The article's "adaptive adolescent theory" casts adolescents as "exquisitely sensitive, highly adaptable creatures wired almost perfectly for the job of moving from the safety of home into the complicated world outside."
Laurence Steinberg, developmental psychologist specializing in adolescence at Temple University, points out that even the biggest risk-takers, 14- to- 17-year-olds, use the same basic cognitive strategies that adults do. They reason their way through problems as well as adults, and fully recognize that they are mortal. So why do they take more chances? He says it's because they weigh the risk vs. reward differently; they value the reward more than adults do. This sounds like what you're afraid of with your son. He presents as skilled, capable and confident, but you fear that in an unforgiving environment like driving, where he is cast into a maelstrom where everything is happening at 90 ft/sec, there is no natural selection process in his thousands-of-years-old DNA that provides him with instinctual wisdom in this brave new environment of our own recent creation, where trial-and-error is not an option.
I can't make this decision for you, but I can wholeheartedly support whatever you choose, because you know him best and you know what we do. I will say that if you bring him, come with him, take part in all the discussions, talk to him between drills, insist that he get every single thing he can out of the training. One of our instructors almost lost his life the second day he had his license. Another is an ER doctor. Another is a police officer who suffered a TBI when hit by a car in the line of duty. They all send the right message, but we both know that that doesn't mean it will be heard. But I will say you are asking exactly the right question at exactly the right time.
Best Regards,
Sandy Stevens
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