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.
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.
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.
“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.