What Jim and others said about people learning in different ways is so very true. So is the "obvious to us but not them" thing.

A teenager and father show up at the field with a never-flown trainer. The father was just watching, the kid was flying. (I think the father was more nervous than the kid). Everything checked out, so off we went after a bit of ground school.

Two funny things happened.

First, he was having a lot of trouble making smooth turns. I think he wasn't centering the ailerons, he keept rolling tighter in to the turns. I did tell him to center the sticks and stop rolling, but it wasn't sinking in. I had him watch my fingers, it didn't help. So I borowed a page from Ragland and had him set the buddy box down and come stand next to me. I had him put his thumb over mine while I made 3 or 4 turns, then had him go pick up the boddy box again. It made a huge differnece in his turns right there, big improvement.

Second, at one point, I was saying "left, left, left, roll left, give it a little left stick, left... your other left.." then I took over to avoid flying over the pits. He asked me if when I said "left" if I ment the planes left or our left. DOH!. I missed that one in ground school badly. Of course I always meant airplane-left or transmitter-left, but he was trying to figure out if that's what I meant, or if I was trying to get him to go towards our left. So he was spending way too much time and mental effort trying to figure out what to do.