Asklemmy

43942 readers

495 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

574

What's a skill that's taken for granted where you live, but is often missing in people moving there from abroad? (kyu.de)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

500 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

One of my friends is 33 and she and her older sister can’t swim. They grew up on a rural farm far away from any body of water.

Gen-X. Lived near a lake or ocean 80% of my life. Grew up poor. Swimming lessons were a costly luxury that didn't make the budget. Ever.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I feel like swimming lessons are a bit of a scam anyways. Me and my brother grew up poor. We both can swim perfectly fine. We went to lakes / public pools often while growing up.

Never took any swimming lessons. My parents never did swimming lessons and neither did their parents. Just throw the kid in and let him figure it out while he's still young. It's an instinct sort of like dogs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

"Just throw the kid in" This works for just about everything, you'll be surprised.

Dinner? Just gather the ingredients ( to be fair, they're still kids ) and throw the kid in. They'll be a master chef in no time, it's natural.

But seriously, i also learned by instinct, but i remember lots of kids were cautious of and some were really afraid of water and needed a little teaching and patience. It was part of school here in Germany, no opt-out.