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Comment by mcbuilder | Hacker News Reader

I think you may be underestimating just how bad a five year old may be at driving

Yeah young children are pretty bad drivers, I can attest to that. Sometime around age 4 I swiped my dad’s car keys from the kitchen table (I recall I had to climb a chair to reach the top of the table). I think I wanted to mimic how adults operated cars.

Luckily, I didn’t make it far. When I finally got it into gear I crashed into the viaduct paralleling our house blocking the road until another motorist found me.

My parents didn’t spank us often but I sure caught hell for that stunt and my allowance was garnished for a very long time!

You had an allowance at age 4?

Son, now that you're in high school, it's time you start getting an allowance. However, remember that incident with the car ten years ago? It's time to start paying it off.

Our kid, who is 5, gets an allowance. It's nominal, but it teaches her to save/spend/share money and it's a good way to teach numbers and basic math.

So far, she's managed to set aside enough to get a dinosaur lego set she really, really wanted and also gone on some carousel rides and bought candy once or twice. It's been a benefit for everyone, I think.

Teaching to save a % of your income early on is awesome! Good parenting.

Thanks! There's a product called a moon jar that we have found some success with and gave us the idea.

Yeah, we've taught or kids those things from an early age as well, but I* think it's a bit early for an allowance. I think the biggest reason for that is not wanting to couple the idea of routine chores with the allowance.

There concept of routine chores (keep your room clean, help keep shared spaces clean, etc) should be well established before an allowance enters the picture. The allowance isn't for doing those things that are just a basic expectation of family life, and starting them both at an early age risks coupling them.

* This is my own personal opinion about our family, and not in any way a value judgement on differing approaches

We don't couple it to chores. Chores are something everyone does because it helps the family. We're trying to be intentional about not connecting those concepts.

I think we started "chores" when she was 3. Obviously a three year old doesn't really do much, but she showed interest in feeding the dog and folding some blankets so those became her chores. We make a point of having both parents visibly do chores together.

We'll see how effective this is in another ten years, I suppose.

I believe the majority of incidents where young kids "drive" end very quickly as minor parking lot or driveway accidents. The above comment might not actually be too far off the mark.

...semi-aside, a young kid driving in a driveway would be perfectly legal, right? Private property and all that?

IANAL but I believe so. When I was very young, long before a license, but probably closer to 10 than 5, my parents taught me to drive the tractor around the field. I think others here will have had similar experiences as well.

I remember meeting farm kids who were offspring of one of my mom's college classmates who routinely drove around the farm back in the 70s.

This is still routine today. Most of the farm kids I know were driving early, some before 10.

Still normal as soon as they can reach the pedals. If they're on a farm they're probably also riding on (or driving) small tractors and four-wheelers, and maybe riding horses, all of which are a hell of a lot more dangerous than towing a trailer of square bales a quarter mile over a private dirt road in the old '94 Ford, from the field to the barn, probably not going over 15mph because you'll rattle your bones out of your skin and the windows out of their frames if you go faster. Hell driving on a farm is probably safer than wandering around the more developed parts playing. There are lots of ways to get hurt on the kinds of structures, equipment, and junk in the more developed areas of a farm, and there's the livestock, if there is any, which can also be very dangerous.

That's how I first learned to drive, doing laps around the front pasture in my mom's S-10.

you are underestimating kids... given a proper sized car where they can reach the controls, they do pretty good. My kid has been driving a 12V electric car from age two.

Not many 5 year olds are tall enough to see the road and push the gas pedal at the same time though. The article states that this specific boy looked like he was 8 or 9.

no, but maybe his parents setup the car to accommodate...

Yeah, not even only farm kids driving tractors. I was riding a motorcycle in first grade and not long after came the era of go-karts (my dad and friends build the local go-kart track). When dad broke his right arm, I learned to shift left-handed from the passenger seat. There was always a bunch of stuff like going to get the car out of the garage and up to the front door that you just let the kids do.

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