I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - it’s pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot that’d be rather time consuming.

Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either can’t ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.

edit: the high number of replies mentioning “swimming” made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.

  • totallynotarobot@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    My family-in-law, all 4 generations, are like 462874th generation American. They use cutlery in their fists like they’re cavemen stabbing at the last mammoth chop.

    I definitely do not think chopstick experience is their problem.

    • Raxiel@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      That’s fair. Funnily enough, in the discussion that resulted from the meal I mentioned, my Chinese co-workers did say there are plenty of people who can’t use chopsticks well either.