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.

  • cubedsteaks
    2·
    1 year ago

    I could never do the two finger whistle and still can’t. Never tried whistling through my hands before.

    But now that I’ve had multiple dental surgeries I have to be careful when I speak because sometimes I get the siblin s sound now as an adult and if I do it too hard it’s like a high pitched squeal.