Driving lesson for an au pair

[Ladymuck]

Have a French au pair starting next week. Driving is part of the role, so have got her insured but also wanted to get her a driving lesson in our estate car. Local driving school say that they will only take her in their (little) cars. Before I go through yellow pages, does anyone know whether I'm likely to find someone who will drive with her in our car (she has been driving for 3 years apparently).

I don't know - would suspect not.

We have had a number of French APs who needed to drive. The first one had one lesson with a school, but to be honest, I am not sure it was worth it. Thereafter my DH has taken them out on quiet roads (this was north London) and made sure he was 100% happy before letting them drive with teh children. I think we had 6 in total who drove - and this worked well.

So how about you, your DH, or perhaps a friend giving her a lesson in the car? When I was on my own (DH in the Navy), my Dad adn FIL gave lessons.

Good luck.

I suspect for professional insurance reasons they won't do it.

What Frak said :o, my friend is a driving instructor and it's her dual control car or nothing.

I used to get a driving instructor to take our AP's out in their car for an assessment lesson.
They'd then report back to me, strengths, weaknesses etc so we could work on it ourselves.
It was usually roundabouts and position on the road (rural lanes) here, but once we had a Bulgarian AP who the driving instructor told us we'd be bloody crazy to let her drive. We had to let her go.

I always get BSM to give them a 2 hour session to put them through their paces. The instructor then gives you a full run-through. Usually we get the same chap coming each time and he is really open, but we once got an instructor who was wishy-washy so I had to put him on the spot and ask him if he would let his own children out in a car driven by her (he said no!).

I tend to think far better to have her tested in an easy car than in an estate, because otherwise instructor is not going to know if the mistakes she makes are because of car type or because she's crap at driving. Then once you've established she can drive, you can then take her out yourself a few times to give her practice. Probably not worth paying for this because she will only get used to the car with experience.

Like Ingles we had to get rid of a girl because BSM chap said she was a danger and her driving habits were probably too ingrained to easily fix (she had been driving in her home country for 10 years). We are now ruthless in terms of the nationalities we hire (which is probably a very racist position to take). I would imagine French would be fine though.