Growing up in California I didn’t get much experience driving in the snow and I had a steep learning curve when I moved to Chicago.  So it’s pretty important to me to make sure that my kids get an early start.  My 3 year old made a lot of progress with his driving lessons last fall and so I wanted to strike while the iron was hot and get him out on the road in some snow this winter.

There are certainly some new challenges involved.  For safety reasons I wanted him to learn in a car with all-wheel-drive.  Only my car has that, but my car is a manual transmission.  He’s a big boy but still its a big reach down to that clutch.  We figured out that he could see a lot better with a simple convex mirror held at just the right angle.

It takes a lot of practice to do that and shift gears quick enough to get his hands back on the steering wheel, so we had to start early before the big snows hit to make this transition as smooth as possible.

Another big issue with driving in the snow of course is that the car can easily get stuck, especially when you are just learning.  Before I’m going to let him take the wheel in a major snow storm I want to make sure he knows how to get the car out of rut when necessary.  We are firm believers in teaching our children to be self-sufficient. So we practiced this a lot.

As with every big milestone in a child’s life, there were many ups and downs.  Not to mention some real nail-biting moments as you would expect.  So you could imagine our pride and emotion when he was finally ready for his first solo ride. (Click here to see video if you are using google reader)