Posted on 02/16/2026 7:48:48 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
As a mom of three kids, Christina Mott had been counting the days until her oldest son, Colton, got his driver's license.
It falls on her to drive each of them — age 10, 12, and 16 — to three different charter schools every day, and then to extracurriculars and social outings. "Having him able to drive himself would free up a lot of time," she says. If only.
While out one day on his learner's permit, Colton rolled through a red light and a stop sign. He panicked and decided to put his license on hold indefinitely. "Getting in crashes, that's something that scares me a lot," Colton explains.
That means his mom is still chauffeuring three kids around their Northern California suburb. Christina, who's 46, says a lot of her fellow parents are going through the same thing: Teenagers are slamming the brakes on the time-honored rite of passage of getting a license at 16, either out of fear or because they're put off by the process or the costs. And that means a lot of Gen X parents are stuck behind the wheel longer than they bargained for.
Even so, she admits Colton doesn't feel quite as ready for a license as she was at 16. "He's not very observant and tends to live in his own world," she says. "I don't think, without GPS, that he would even know how to get to the grocery store from our house that we've lived in for eight years. So, the idea of him dealing with traffic lights and other drivers makes me nervous, too."
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
No kidding. It used to be “Go outside and play!” or “Mom, I’m going over to Jimmy’s house. See ya. I’ll be home for dinner.” We used to spend hours exploring the woods and streams near us, building tree houses, snow forts, having snowball fights, wearing homemade hobo costumes on Halloween, making our own ball field in a fallow farm field, going to church.
“””I was driving a John Deere tractor at 10 years old pulling peanut trailers. My brain can’t even go where this article takes us.”””
I am having the same brain freezes. I was driving a Farmall tractor at that age
Who raised "Colton" to be a pussy? Where is Colton's father?
It is not easy. You want to protect them and cuddle them. It goes against every instinct you have to bush them off and send them back to an activity where they already got hurt once. But if you don't they grow up scared to do things.
You are not raising a child, you are raising a future adult. And as an adult you must do things that scare you.
TEAR DOWN THE WALL!!!
TEAR DOWN THE WALL!!!
TEAR DOWN THE WALL!!!
A catastrophic fraction of children today are being trained to NOT assume responsibilities.
“Driving is an essential task.”
Agreed.
“You should be required to have a drivers license to join the military.”
Ideally, this would be so, but the effect would be that most urban kids could not join, as many big city people never get the chance to learn to drive as a kid.
Now, if you wanted to eliminate them as recruits, that would be another story.
No, you don't. That's an illusion and a delusion. I'm sure virtual life on a phone may seem like "access to the entire world" to someone who has never experienced the world beyond his school and his home ... but it is not reality at all. It is illusion and delusion.
I got my license at 16, and I learned to drive a manual transmission. The first vehicle I drove was a 1945 Ford GPW (WWII Jeep) that belonged to the family and was kept at the family cabin in the Sierra Nevada mountains in the summer. Then I practiced on our ‘62 Mercedes-Benz 190D - no risk of speeding tickets in that thing! It had a four on the tree.
Driving is more challenging these days because of distracted drivers (”smart” phones are the main culprit). Even though it’s technically illegal around here, I still see people going down the road at 45 mph and they’re looking down at something.
That’s the #1 reason why I quit riding my bicycle to work a couple of years ago.
I had a driver’s license at the age of 16. 1963. Driver’s education in High School 10th grade, 1962.
I had a girl friend in 1971 who did not know how to drive. She was 22 years of age.
I went to a county high school in Virginia. While I did not learn how to drive on a John Deere tractor, the vast majority of my classmates did. It was a piece of cake for them to get a license. And after getting their license, most of them got a license to drive a school bus. In my junior/senior high school years, my classmates were also the bus drives.
“He’s not very observant and tends to live in his own world,” she says”
Typical modern Gen Z - Alpha kid. Because of social media kids have their nose down looking at a phone most of their waking hours. No person-to-person contact, no situational awareness, nothing that inspires positively or breeds the need to be part of a community.
These folks need to never be driving or doing anything that requires a significant level of non-phone attention.
“While out one day on his learner’s permit, Colton rolled through a red light and a stop sign. He panicked and decided to put his license on hold indefinitely. “Getting in crashes, that’s something that scares me a lot,” Colton explains.”
What a girl.
I’d say something else but I’m in polite company.
Yeah you do. It’s not access the way you understand it. But it life, it is access. And it’s kinda awesome. And it’s very real.
It’s nice that “Colton” realizes that his inattention will result in accidents, perhaps injuries. But a maturing kid needs to fix the problem, not hide from it behind mommie’s skirts. Colton’s mother has taught her son to remain a child rather than grow up. He suffers from Learned Dependency.
The kid needs sent to a rough boot camp/summer camp run by heterosexual men who will force him to pay attention, solve problems, build stuff, do hard physical work with a team until exhausted, learn life skills, eat whatever crap food is available and take his turn making it, get from point a to b by himself, drive whatever ATVs, trucks, and boats are at hand, throw his phone and gameboy in the trash, ridicule him when he cries, and make him like it.
Or he can remain Peter Tranny Pan like mommie wants.
I am going to miss that truck.
“Traffic has become marketedly worse in the USA, as well, with imported driving practices from China and South of the Rio Grande.”
Since the Californians got here to Colorado the stop signs and lights are optional. It’s mayhem every day.
I disagree with every statement you just made, most particularly that it’s “very real”. And don’t dare to presume that you know what I do or do not “understand”.
Someone who has never experienced reality won’t know the difference.
Welcome to the matrix ...
“Freedom, autonomy (to a certain extent) and GIRLS!!!”
Yes sir, that’s was all that mattered then.
A really excellent point!
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