As parents, we have two tasks:  to enable our teens to be competent drivers and to ensure their safety, the safety of their passengers and the safety of other drivers they encounter.

The three leading causes of accidents involving teenage drivers are:

• Inexperience
• Teen passengers in the vehicle
• Nighttime driving

In Michigan, the graduated licensing system restricts passengers and nighttime driving for a time and requires a certain number of hours of driving to be logged.

The only cure for inexperienced driving is…experience!  Allow your teen ample opportunities to drive, supervised by you or another trusted adult.  When you are running errands, ask your teen to drive you.  Take a road trip with your teen, making them enter and exit the highway.  Be sure your teen drives at night, at dusk and at sunset.  Take them to drive when it’s raining and snowing in places that are safe for them to experience the difference in the way that cars function under these conditions.   It may not be relaxing, but they really need the experience.

“For the report, researchers analyzed data from the Fragile Families & Child Wellbeing Study, a study involving nearly 5,000 mostly unmarried parents of children born in urban areas. Over the course of the survey, from 1998 to 2000, almost half of the fathers spent time in prison or jail.

The study found negative effects of incarceration on fathers’ engagement with children, “but only when fathers were living with their children prior to incarceration,” according to the report.”

It was determined by the researches that being incarcerated had little effect on the parenting skills of fathers who did not previously live with their children.  This was true even after their release from prison.

Another interesting finding was that incarceration increased the likelihood that the non-incarcerated mother would connect with a new life partner, which could offer support of a new family member to the children, “ leading to greater family complexity.”