As a confident and competent driver for 30 years, I am never as comfortable in the passenger’s seat as I am in the driver’s. So at least part of the anxiety that floods my body when my 17 year old daughter Maddy takes the wheel has to do with sitting on the right (i.e., wrong) side of the vehicle.

Not since the twins took their first wobbly steps has parental anxiety turned my stomach quite this much. Apparently, in the unwritten rules surrounding division of labour among parental units, teaching one’s teenager to drive is a dad’s job. I tried to convince LA that since we have a non-traditional arrangement and she is comfortable taking on many of the other “dad” roles – primary breadwinner, home renovator, etc. – that this was her natural role. Nice try, she says. Uh…no.

The whole teenager driving thing has been traumatic for me. First, I was in denial. This manifested itself by me telling Maddy that if she wanted to drive, she’d have to get responsible enough to make her own arrangements for licensing, driving classes, etc. Which did make sense in its own right, since driving is an adult responsibility. Now that she has gotten licensed, taken the in-class course and done the in-car training, there is nowhere left to turn. Despite passing her driving course, her instructor suggested she still needs to practice for another 50 hours before taking her in-car test. 50 hours?! Yikes. I spend 5-10 hours a week in the car for routine driving. If she drove every time, she’s still need another couple of months of practice.

And I’ve been thinking a lot about how driving is just a later stage of a process of teaching our children how to be mobile. Mobility, it seems, is not just about technology, it’s a way of life in our post-modern, urban world.  We start off our lives not being able to do much in terms of mobility. When we crawl, it’s an occasion for joyous celebration. When we walk, the video cameras roll. Before you know it, we are running and riding tricycles. Some kids are taught to slide down show-covered hills on skis, while others learn to glide along metal blades on ice.

We also teach our kids about other forms of transportation as they are growing up.  The imperative of mobility requires that we teach our kids how how to behave on an airplane and not to be afraid. They also learn how to ride trains and buses and other forms of public transportation as they grow up.

Bicycles can be a major step in personal mobility and we are in the midst of that learning process with the twins. (Pictures coming soon – as soon as the darn snow melts.) And that’s pretty much it until 15 or 16, when driving looms as the last great step in mobility.

Personal mobility is the essence of our privileged, urban lives. I say this having moved our home, family and our entire life from Toronto to Edmonton earlier this year.

If this sounds to you like a grandiose way of rationalizing why I need to sit in the van’s passenger seat and help Maddy learn how to drive, you are right. It is precisely that.