To expect a driving instructor to ring the doorbell?

[NotTonightDeidre]

Just that really. DS missed a driving lesson this morning because he wasn't awake. The driving instructor text him to say he was outside. He didn't call his phone or ring our doorbell.

I get that it's DS' responsibility to be at the lesson, but if it were me I'd just ring/knock when it's a pick up from home.

Is it really that unreasonable to get out of the car & walk 10 steps to the front door?

Well, if an alarm clock, or even a smoke alarm won't wake your teen what makes you think a doorbell would?

At the end of the day if your teen is old enough to be able to learn to drive then they are old enough to get themselves up and ready in time for the lesson that they have presumably booked or at least agreed to.

I thought nobody on Mumsnet liked anybody ringing doorbells without giving three months' notice anyway. 😀And, something else that always gets Mumsnetters hot and bothered: when I was an instructor, I often asked if I could use their toilets before or after a lesson. (Public toilets in inner London are extremely scarce, especially ones where you can park the car nearby.) Only one pupil ever refused.

More seriously, I don't think it's completely unheard of, driving instructors coming to ring the bell. They always seem to do so on "docu-soaps" about driving instructors. And I think they probably did it more when fewer people had mobile phones, including the instructors themselves.

Here are some of the common sense things I had to tell pupils to do when I was a driving instructor. Some of these were teenagers, but a few young adults as well:

• Have breakfast before a morning lesson.
• Don't drink alcohol. (Yes, I had to turn a few pupils away because of this.)
• Wear sensible shoes, no flip flops, high heels, or Uggs.
• Bring sunglasses, if you have them. (I kept a cheap pair in the car in summer.)
• Put sun cream on, if you burn easily. (One or two pupils did get burnt in summer.)
• Get cash out before the lesson: so many lessons involved stopping by a cash point.

I found that with some teenagers, especially the private school ones, driving was the first time in their lives they'd had to make any decisions. Everything had been micromanaged for them. Also, for some of those who were top in everything at school, failing a driving test was a massive shock: for some, it was the first time they had failed anything.

Possibly he doesn't have the maturity to be driving a car in that case.

He probably will if he's not paying for the lessons!

This. That's what my DD does. She can be bad at remembering and getting up so I make it my responsibility to remind her & ring her in advance if I'm at work since I'm the mug paying for it!

Learning to set alarms and wake up to them is a big lesson for teens. He won’t forget this jn a hurry. Honestly my grandad used the expression “well that’s cheap learning for you” and it applies here. Yea the money lost in the short term is annoying but if he helps him in future it’s worth it

get your DS to set his alarm - simple.

My dd had three driving instructors. (She passed in the end) None of them was ever seen or heard of by the human eye.

All communication was with dd through texts until right at the very end of the experience. Then dd came to the door and said ‘Jason wants to talk to you’ and in he came, jolly as Father Christmas, to talk about test day.

Just a thought, most driving instructors use the first part of a student’s lesson to drive the previous student home. Why should the first student - who presumably made the effort, got themselves up, dressed and ready for their lesson - have to wait around for an idle teen to get up and slouch out of the house unwashed and still with sleep in their eyes.

Hope the instructor got the first student home in a timely fashion to get on with their day, and then enjoyed a short (paid!) break from the excruciating tedium of explaining to 17 year olds that pedestrians are people too.

What?? Since when?? This is more ludicrous than my suggestion that the DI might ring a doorbell.

Every driving instructor I know does this, otherwise the instructor is wasting hours of their time returning students to their own homes before driving to pick up the next student.

My Dad used to be a driving instructor and this was very frowned on back then (in the 80s!). It was deemed unprofessional and unethical.

It's called "piggy backing", using the previous pupil's lesson to pick up the next pupil. It was generally frowned upon. I only did it in emergencies. Male instructors were even told not to wear shorts, because it looked unprofessional.

Many instructors would like to have a small catchment area, but this is sometimes easier said than done.

YABU. Fast asleep when the car go beep beep.

Never heard of that and it is not something I would be comfortable with.

When I am paying for my ds's lessons I expect it to be without an unknown spectator in the back seat.

But then what? Your son wouldn’t have been ready anyway.

Your son is presumably nearly or an adult and you’re babying him. Insane

I had to get myself to a prearranged pick-up point in the town centre and instructor dropped previous pupil and I got in. But that was many years ago.

Anyway your DS is responsible as others have said, and I actually find the idea that the DI needed to do more a little rude.

30 years my driving instructor never rang the door bell. He pulled up outside and I ran out to begin the lesson. It was your responsibility to be ready and waiting for the driving instructor. Yabu. Your son is 17 and if old enough to drive old enough to take the responsibility here. My neighbour is learning to drive and I know the driving instructor doesn't know on the door.

I’ve never in my life heard of this, none of my DD’s three instructors did it and I pity anything who would have had to go in the crack of a car with my dd driving!

I thought it was illegal for a learner driver to have a passenger.

Why doesn't your son set an alarm?

Some of us left home at 17 and managed to apply and pay for our provisional license, use the Yellow Pages to find a driving instructor, book and pay for our lessons with money we had earned (in a job we had to be on time for) and be ready and waiting for the instructor on time. All before mobile phones were even a thing and without parents acting as our alarm clock.

Are teenagers really less capable of being responsible these days or are parents holding them back by never making them accountable for their mistakes?

Would you expect your hairdresser to knock on your door if you had missed your appointment because you’d overslept?

That’s not how it works I’m afraid. Time between lessons is dead time.
even if he had rung the bell no guarantee she would have woken up plus how long would it have taken her to get ready / what kind of state of mind would she have been in to control a car??

I think the question here is why was your son still asleep when his driving lesson was due to start?!