Can a Teenager With ADHD Drive?

When my son was diagnosed with inattentive ADHD, the questions started piling up immediately. One of those questions that always came was whether he could learn to drive, having ADHD.

Can a teenager with ADHD drive? In short, yes! But let me tell you about our experience.

My son turned sixteen a couple of months ago, and I will tell you that the last year has been a whirlwind.

Surprisingly, my son is getting his driver’s license was a lot of work. I think some of it is because he is my oldest, so getting a driver’s license was a new experience for both of us. It was a year’s worth of work for both of us. He had to take the test to get his learner’s permit, drive many hours, take a Driver’s Education course, and take a lot of drives with an instructor.

Interestingly, driving wasn’t the area of his life where ADHD and attention created the biggest hurdle, that turned out to be his path toward becoming a pilot, which brought an entirely different set of challenges.

He got his learner’s permit very quickly. He just had to take a written test. Getting him to drive the car was the hardest part. And it wasn’t the ADHD that ended up being the problem. He ended up having a great deal of anxiety. Every time he drove, he worried about getting into an accident and wrecking the car.

Even as he got more experience with driving, he has struggled to get over his anxiety. From the beginning, he never enjoyed driving, so getting him to commit to driving was always a battle. Once he got his license and realized how much more freedom he had, his anxiety went down.

In the end, and with much celebration, my son received his license. It was a lot of work to get there, but every child is different, and every child’s ADHD is different, and how you choose to manage it including whether or not to use medication can shape how milestones like driving unfold. Can a teenager with ADHD drive? Yes, in my experience, I know that if you have a child with ADHD, it is possible for them to drive. It may not be easy, but they can do it. Just give them lots of encouragement and be patient.