Dylan Still Chooses “No Work.”

Given Dylan’s great success with his GPA and turning in work for the past week, some people are wondering about Dylan’s driving opportunities.

Mostly, Dylan is wondering.

Dylan has done well with pulling himself out of the gutter. But this is nothing we haven’t seen before. And there hasn’t been much time yet for him to fall into another gutter. His behavior hasn’t changed much – except that he brought me a note from his teacher before I even asked him to get one. He is still not studying. He is still spending hours and hours and hours on his cell phone. He hasn’t done any SAT practice at all, in spite of my insistence that he needs to do it at least five times a week – particularly this month, to get ready for his PSAT test in a few weeks.

When given the option of school work or no work, Dylan still chooses no work. Instead of taking the bull by the horns and tackling his responsibilities before they become problems, he is tackling the problems one at a time, as they come up. So while his behavior is good, I wouldn’t call it “responsible.”

In fact, he hasn’t even done what is needed to get his learner’s permit. I told him he needs to find out when and where to take the test. (This information is available online and can be acquired in two minutes.) Then he needs to sign up for a time to take the test, and study to get ready for it. Then he can, at least, get his learner’s permit.

Dylan hasn’t even queried about when and where to take the test. I guess he doesn’t care all that much about driving after all.

It’s a shame, really, because he has great skill in driving. He was only four when he was able to steer his grandparents’ electric toy car down the sidewalk, following a perfect path – except when he decided that he was a monster truck driver, and rammed the car into a tree. Dylan has also been driving go karts for years, and really knows what he’s doing on the track, and in our yard.

But he needs to do quite a bit more before he’s able to drive on the streets. Otherwise, it’s like giving a kid fencing lessons and then expecting him to be a great chef. Dylan’s skills need to be a bit more refined.

And that’s what practice driving is all about.

For now, though, there will be no practice driving. There isn’t even a test to take. Thank God, he has plenty of time to learn.

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