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.
Can’t ride a bicycle in my area without very insanely high risk of death. You don’t see bikes on roads at all. None of my kids know how to ride. Ive ridden vast distances though. Makes me very sad.
Are there any paved trails they can learn on? Rails-to-trails can be great, as they’re naturally flat and straight, if there are any of those near you.
Dutchie here, we have the opposite super power. Bikes are everywhere, we are used to them. Most of the times in urban settings the bike is the best option.
We also get buffs to perception. Being used to bikes means noticing them. ‘the Dutch reach’, where you open the door with your opposite hand, so you watch out for bikes, is a lie. We don’t do that, we’ve gotten used to looking for them, because everybody knows what’s it like to actually be on a bike themselves.
Yeah I lived there when I was young. It is a completely different reality to where I’m living now.
Are you in one of those north American developments with long straight multiline roads without proper sidewalks?
If so, something like this doesn’t exist here at all. The smaller roads are not really suitable for high speed driving, and there’s not much traffic. The main roads all have wide foot and bike paths on both sides next to them - so only thing you need to know is how to safely cross a road.
In addition to that there are lot of small pedestrian/cycle only paths as shortcuts between parts of the city.