Most vehicles today use an automatic transmission, and unless you’re teaching your teen to use a sport or muscle car, chances are your teen is learning to drive on an automatic transmission. It may just happen to be that the vehicle you have to teach your teen to drive with is a manual transmission vehicle, and so you me be wondering “How do I teach my teen to drive with a manual transmission?”
My advice is that you don’t. Now, I don’t mean that your teen shouldn’t learn how to drive a manual transmission, I mean that when your teen is learning how to drive, learning how to maneuver a vehicle, how , how , how , how to read traffic, how to move their eyes and turn their head, they should do it without the added distraction of learning how and when to shift gears.
When you first start teaching your teen to drive, it’s already pretty daunting to them. They’ve never had to be in control of so much metal. Teach them on an automatic first. Let them master the skills of maneuvering a vehicle first before you throw in the extra challenge of getting a feel for the gears and shifting that comes with a manual transmission.
Watch this video to see Patrick Barrett, the Driver Education Guru, explain the importance of taking your time.