Julie Bowen talks about teenage driving

If you feel like you’re the last to know what’s going on in your teen’s life, Julie Bowen here with you

“Being in the dark is a scary milestone for me,” the actress and mom of three teenagers, 17-year-old Oliver and 15-year-old twins John and Gustav, admits in a chat with SheKnows. “Like, is this a girlfriend? Are you guys involved? Thank God for brothers, because they sometimes say, ‘Yeah, it happened…yeah, they were going to party’—or, excuse me,” she corrects her teenage terminology, “They were in a ‘situation.“”

It’s hard to go from knowing everything about your children to being very clueless. But like any parent teenagers can testify, is a many things that What to look forward to while you wait just didn’t warn you about the (nerves!) … like “situations” or anything, really. Raising a teenager can be a tough road, especially when you get to the point where literal involved roads. Learning to drive is one of those milestones that brings more freedom to teenagers and more gray hair to their parents, and Bowen is at the center of it; we were able to empathize with the ups and downs of the teenage driver thanks to her recent partnership with Hyundai, recognized US News and World Report as a manufacturer of some of the best cars for teenage drivers.

“I am most concerned about their overconfidence driving in general”, Modern family the star says about her boyfriends. “They think they know everything, and then they’re afraid to admit what they don’t know.” Is it because they’re gamers who think years of “driving” race cars on screen equates to real-life experience? We agree that we’re not sure, but one thing’s for sure: you can’t just crash into something and then “respawn” IRL, and there are very real—and very risky—variables involved actually while on the road. “(Video game) tracks don’t have stop signs, and drunk, distracted people merge onto the 101,” quips Bowen.

When there are new drivers on the road with many distractions, it helps a little to know that we have the technology available to track their location in real time. Most of us are glad it never happened we were teenagers, but this is a definite advantage now that we are parents. And while you’d be hard-pressed to get them to admit it, teenagers don’t always remember that someone knows where they are. “My kids always say, ‘Mom, why you? tracking me? … You’re such a weird stalker,” Bowen laughs. “But it gives them a sense of security. It makes me feel better too.”

Of course, with all the technology we have at our disposal, there is no safety feature available that can prevent teenagers from making bad decisions. This fact is not lost on Bowen or any other parent teenagershence the lecture we are all familiar with. This is parental language that often causes eye rolls and “I nooooo Mom,” but hopefully that’s also what plays in our teenagers’ heads when they find themselves in a potentially dangerous situation.

“You’ll never have a problem calling me if you think you’re in any situation where driving is a bad idea,” Bowen says (constantly) to her kids in typical fashion mom fashion. “Yes, you can have all the safety gear in the world…but there’s no substitute for using your own judgment when you’re with a bunch of idiot teenagers who may or may not have any violations and it’s no-drive time. They are so sick of hearing me say, “No pills, no powders.” Never, never, never, ever get behind the wheel of a car when you’ve been in the room and felt something funny. Yes, take Uber. I will go broke down on Ubers.”

Fortunately, Bowen says the only teenage driving drama she’s had to deal with was when one of her sons accidentally pulled the car out of the garage. “That’s why I was so excited about all the Hyundai features, because they have so many safety features and things like automatic back-up…that makes my kids feel a lot more confident about, you know, not tearing the wall out of the garage again,” she laughs. “Maybe once was enough.”

Before you go, see what celebrity parents have to say teaching teenagers to drive.