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.
People are deathly afraid of kidnappers and drug dealers getting to their children, when in reality crime rates are the lowest they’ve ever been.
For the record, nobody ever offered me free drugs till I was in my 40s.
It all depends on the type of person. You’ll see if somebody would possibly be inclined to use drugs and become a potential client.
People stopped asking me if i sell drugs, around the time i turned 30.
Past two decades, my husband gets these offers any time his hair grows to chin length. But, yeah, not as a kid.
I’m afraid of cars, that’s it. It’s a self-perpetuation circle.