I'm 43 and I can't learn to drive!! Feel useless

You say in your op you need to pass your test within the next year. That gives you time but if you fail you will need a plan b for the schools.

How do the children get to school now?

You need a lot more practice time.

4 hours is nowhere near enough.

i had no access to non instructor practice so I did 2 hour lessons 3 or 4 times a week. This still took months.

You CAN learn to drive. You just don't want to learn ENOUGH. Change your mindset. Go into your lessons saying "I can do this, I need to do this " , not "I can't do this ".
Do it for your family. Imagine having one of your DC having an accident and needing to go to hospital. If you can drive you wouldn't need to wait for an ambulance or taxi.
Can you dance? Driving is much like dancing. A series of coordinated moves whilst avoiding the other "dancers ".

Excellent, so ask him when you can do your test then.

But you may not be literally PHYSICALLY CAPABLE of doing this. You must realise this is a distinct possibility.

I'm sure plenty of people with dyspraxia do drive, but it'll depend on how severe their dyspraxia is. You've said you have virtually no spatial awareness, struggle to stay in lanes, panic at roundabouts, are bad at steering etc. That all sounds really difficult to me.

Can you imagine a time when you can confidently and safely drive your children to school in rush-hour traffic? It isn't just a question of passing your test. It's about being able to drive your children safely. If you think that will be possible for you, then you need to tell your instructor you MUST pass your test in six months and agree a plan of action with them. As others have said, lots of practice in a quiet/off-road spot with one of your relatives/friends may help with the steering & judging distances.

Have you taken any tests already? Perhaps ask your instructor to put you in for one ASAP as that'll give you feedback on your weaknesses. Most people don't pass first time.

I've not read the whole thread but you are clearly very frustrated about the situation

Driving is difficult. Not everyone can do it. The reality is that you might not be able to pass a driving test.

The situation with your children must seem impossible however maybe you need to consider it the same as if you had a medical condition such as epilepsy and driving would not be an option.

We can't on here change your situation. Some situations are just really really hard. You need to speak to your children's schools, social care workers, local council and try and ask for help finding a solution to this.

4 hours a week wasn't enough for me. God knows how much money I sank into lessons. I had my father in law take me out in the car every other day for 2 hours plus. I finally passed 4th time and have now been driving for 12 years, no accidents.

I think there’s more to this than just you. I think your instructors just aren’t very good!!! You’ve mentioned a few times it seems like they just take you out and expect you to “get it”. I’m ND and found I couldn’t “get it” from just time in the car. I needed someone to break down the concepts more technically so I really understood before I started to be able to actually do it in the car.

So for spatial awareness he explained lots about how your brain judges distance and how moving at speed impacts that and gave me some ideas of reference points to use. We stayed away from things like roundabouts and just pootled round housing estates and side roads until I was able to grasp the positioning of the car in the road and it became more automatic.

Then we moved on to roundabouts. He had toy cars and laminated sheets in the car and would pull us over and use these to talk through different scenarios that might happen, different roundabout set ups and when I should or shouldn’t react etc. Seeing him move the cars round the sheet from a birds eye view was what made me understand roundabouts in a way that just driving up to one wouldn’t. Same with complex junctions, parking etc.

Then we did exercises to work on how far down the road I was watching and talking about techniques you can use to scan the road, check for hazards etc.

It took me over 100 hours of lessons and even more practice with my parents, even when I was 17 but it really worked for me. It shocked me that some of my friend’s instructors didn’t teach in this way and essentially just took them out driving and assumed they would pick it up. My brain would never ever have picked it up without all that time pulled over, explaining technical stuff, why the brain works in certain ways etc and helping me to fully understand, not just “do”.

I can’t drive - tries so many times then gave up and I rely on dh and Ubers! (Can’t use public transport either or work due to certain difficulties). I used to feel awful about it as it’s expected that most people can do certain key things.

Based on my previous post this makes a lot of sense to me! Definitely worth a try I reckon (and probably more helpful than Mariokart!).

Hey OP

On the off chance that it helps - I was struggling to learn to drive for a few years and failed my test a number of times. It was mainly anxiety but it also felt like there was some kind of processing thing going on. At some point I was playing a lot of mainly driving computer games and I swear that did something helpful to my brain, and I managed to get my head round it. Could have been total coincidence but you never know.

I also have SEN kids and think I'm likely ND.

Otherwise I was mainly coming on to say the cost of running a car is so high that taxis/Uber probably isn't that expensive in comparison. But I see you're saying that's not a realistic possibility for you.

I used to drive to and from work every day when I was learning as DH and I worked at the same place. It was good practice.

How is your son driving to and from work if he hasn’t passed his test?

How do your children get to school currently op?

I know you are adamant there is no transport but that is unusual. My dc go to special schools in my area and there are 80 children who attend in taxis every day from miles around. All the different local authorities provide the transport.

It is hard I know. When my dc was waiting for a taxi to be arranged I had to take them and it was horrendous for various reasons and took up hours of my day. Is it realistic for you to take two children with special needs to two different schools each morning and then pick them up even if you could drive. My dc have behavioural difficulties so I absolutely couldn’t do that. They had a driver and a chaperone each.

A friend has a child at a special sen school, and the council pay for a taxi each way for her. Is this an option where you live?

I agree with @FairKoala . You need to drive somewhere that stuffing up isn't an issue.

I was lucky to grow up on a really big farm. Lots of private roads. The farm was great as, if you got something wrong, you could just go into a paddock and it worked like an arrester bed. The cars were bush bashers so a dint was a non issue. We drove so many hours that, by the time we could get our licence, we did a couple of lessons for city driving and were good to go.

Reflecting on my driving journey, if I were you, I'd take the pressure off yourself. Try fanging around a go cart track for a bit so you can practise your steering, speed, driving lines and braking with no issues if you get it wrong. Confidence at the basics ie stop, go, direction, mean you don't have to think about that in your lessons, at which point you could resume lessons in a car.

I am older and am a good driver but parallel parking is a huge issue for me still even though I passed a test years ago

I got car that parks for me.

Ds was in your position. He had so many lessons and his driving instructor actually told him driving might be something he couldn’t do

He stopped for years, then we bought him a very cheap, very old automatic and spent hours driving around empty car parks at night.
He now drives to and from work for hours at a time every single day. He hasn’t taken his test yet but his confidence has come to a point where he can see himself as a driver.

I think there are 3 points to master when driving a car

The operation of driving the vehicle

Processing what a sign says and doing it

And other road users and all are overcome with practice

Have you tried a weeks course where you are driving for hours per day. Even just to boost your hours and get used to daily driving Or asking your driving instructor to map out an easy route you can practice purely driving until you get used to the route and being behind the wheel. You can practice parking, reversing round a corner later

I think the pressure of needing to drive and the negative attitude you have got yourself into is making everything so much worse

Don beat yourself up.

Ask your driving instructor what is the main issue you have and see if you can just concentrate on that one issue