As a mother to three boys, I was nervous about teaching them to take the wheel.

When my boys were small, I was obsessively careful and perpetually worried as they approached each developmental milestone. When they learned to walk, I watched carefully and tried not to let them fall. When they started school, I worried that they wouldn’t make friends right away. When they started playing sports, I spent a lot of time hoping they wouldn’t get hurt.

When they were little, it never occurred to me that we’d spend a better part of the teenage years teaching and worrying about each of them as they became new drivers.