From building fires at school, knives in Kindergarten, challenging personal “risk” at the playground (Deutsche Spielplätze) to mastering public transit and biking alone to school – in this video, we explore the subtle nuances of American child development versus the German parenting style (Erziehung) and why our children in Germany are safer, healthier, more resilient, self-reliant and independent (and Parents are happier too!)
Join us on an enlightening journey as we delve into the subtle, yet powerful aspects of raising children in two different cultures – Germany and the United States. I discuss our journey of “unlearning” the American parenting style and how to embrace the key components of German parenting – a style known for promoting independence, prioritizing outdoor play, and encouraging self-reliance from a young age.
Through our exploration of German parenting style and American parenting style, we’re hoping to build bridges of understanding and provide parents all over the world with valuable insights. Whether you are a parent or an aspiring one, a professional in the field of child development, or just curious about different cultures, this video has something for everyone.
Make sure to subscribe to our channel, like the video, and share your thoughts and experiences in the comment section. Remember, there is no one-size-fits-all in parenting – the journey is as unique as you and your child!
Episode 110 | #germany #usa #family #parenting #parentingstyle #cultureshock #safetyrulesforkids #cycling #infrastructure #safecity #neighborhood #urbanplanning #culturalcomparison #urbandesign #school #expatlife #movingabroad #americaningermany #america #livingabroad | Filmed June 3rdth, 2023
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00:00 Intro
02:04 Child-Friendly Transit & Kid-Centric Public Infrastructure
07:08 The German Parenting Style
10:12 Where Children Are Always Allowed… almost.
12:38 The Problem of “Mom burnout”
17:18 We Trust…. Who?
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Other Videos from our Channel on Raising Children in Germany 🇩🇪 :
Our Strategy (+3 More!) for Raising Bilingual Children & Why We DON’T SPEAK GERMAN at home.
WE WEREN’T PREPARED for GERMAN KITA to be like this.
WHAT DOES A GERMAN MIDWIFE DO? | And How They are AMAZING for Families
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Parents there (I'm Italian, we are a bit too much careful in my view) have a good grip on how to teach children to face the life and what that brings back. I love it. They're not growing overprotected snowflakes!
This is what is great in Germany. Unfortunately I had to drive my kids to school the first 5yrs because we live to far from their school and there were no good transport connections. My oldest took a "school bus" for a few years but the school stopped the bus in his first year of seniors. When my oldest got to 2nd year senior school (11yrs old), he cycled the 6km to school. Then with 12yrs old he also cycled to his rowing club 10km away.. so some days he cycled 35km a day. When he was a teenager he go his first job delivering medicine to people at home for the chemists. He is18yrs old now and still does this job. He loves it.. he gets paid to basically do sport and gets good tips. He cycles to parties… it means he can't drink to much beer because he has to cycle home. Kids can drink beer legally age 14 with adult supervision and age 16 alone.
My kids never eat off the "kids menu" in Germany be it is usually what they don't like.
Your children are still to young.. even in Germany we shuttle our kids around to drs, dentists, therapies, sports, hobbies etc. Especially group sports.. my sons played handball.. so weekend games to.
I suffered from burnout and depression for years here in Germany because I didn't have time for me outside kids and work… my now "ex" didn't support in house or with kids and my first was sick for 7yrs, and my job was in male dominated environment who had zero understanding for "working mums"… so it is very individual and depends on so many factors even in Germany.
In Australia growing up as a kid in tge 90s i rode my bike everywhere, and to school from a very young age
4:48
Lol. Drivers don't watch for cyclists here.
Why won't you give your child a cookie for breakfast? :O
As a Brit whose father grew up in Karlsruhe, I must say you chose a good Land to land in – not just for the scenery but because BW are getting their act very much together in terms of public transport provision – this is the second video of yours I've seen and you have plenty to say – more power to you and your approach to life – I've subbed with the bell on – thank you very much m/
I grew up in Canada during the 70s and 80s and never took a school bus or car to school. Walk, bike, public transit were my methods and it was great!
I went to Kindergarten alone at 4 yo
7:54 Please teach your little ones to remove the helmet when they get on a climbing construct. There were cases that kids strangled themselves because they still wore the cycling helmet.
I am pretty sure that you watch you kid close but just make it a habit for later when the kid is more independent.
Do a lot of Germans homes school their children?
Hello there! All that you mention here also holds true for Finland. Also, mothers or fathers with baby carriages ride without having to pay in public transportation like buses or trams, local trains etc.
Finland and the other Nordic countries are considered child-friendly in many aspects. You have probably heard of the Finnish baby box? Or the Finnish educational system?
One important factor that allows the kids to ride a bus, bike or walk to school or just to be outside in the city, in parks and so on, is that the society is SAFE. Nobody is afraid that their child could be kidnapped, for instance.
And why is that? Because there are no street crimes by destitute and desperate people, or that huge gap between the rich and the poor that the U.S. has, between the haves and the havenots. And no safety nets worth mentioning in the States in comparison with those in Europe.
Btw, I just found your channel and promptly subscribed! You're doing an excellent job and have time to give interesting details about the topics that you choose, as well.
Thank you so much! 🌹
When I went to elementary school in the US after taking my first class in Germany in the mid-1980s, I felt like everyone treated me like a toddler. I can confirm that Children in Germany are more self-reliant and experience greater freedoms than in the US.
LOL. My kids walked to kindergarden alone.
Teach your kids how to use public transport. Teach your kids to be careful. Teach your kids how to talk to people and what people to ignore. Etc. If you do not give your kids freedom and teach them, you in my opinion rob them from important experience. That way you as a parent have more freedom and calm. Also: then you can go to a 3 star restaurant with your kids as they behave well.
Sometimes i do not know where my 12 and 13 year olds are in a particular moment. I trust them as we teached them. That has the benefit of making parents very proud.
As a kid in Australia there were times I walked to school and there were times when I took a bus. But the buses that went to school were just regular public transport buses running special school only routes (it was a private school that had a bunch of routes from various places across town that were just for students of that school and I think some were also for students of another nearby school)
Give that boy his cookie.
Here in America we have the "OMG everyone has a gun, the kids can't leave our sight" parenting.
It's long ago – 60 years – but as a 3-year old, after my mom showed me the way to go once, I walked every day from home to Kindergarten and back, about 330 m crossing 3 busy roads. And I wasn't the only one.
Your story holds true for the Netherlands as well (especially the bike-infra/culture part). Isolation (sometimes packaged as protection) of kids will NOT stimulate their growth, independance, self-reliance, socials bonds and agility to socially bond and strenghten realtionships, it will weaken all these qualities (EQ). I'm a big fan of the "not just bikes" channel where a lot these themes are subjects in lots of brilliant video's (let's call them witness studies). I wish American culture would be more open and accepting of other ways than the "American way" as the only and best way to live a happy and fulfilling life.
Great and amazing video! Thanks for uploading and thumbs up!👍I am from germany and into
my 50´s now. When I went to school we used special school busses that picked us up from elementary school to drive us 7km to the next larger village with schools for 5 to 9 graders and we used them 70% of the time. But there were those 30% where the busses did not arrive on time because of hard weather conditions during the winter or school started at 9 o clock instead of 8 because teachers were sick or we had a free period so we had to walk (during winter time in the dark) by ourselves to the next train station that was 2kms away through a small forrest to get to the next train station where we entered the next train all by ourselves that took us the 5 kms to the village where our school was at. These 2 kilometers through the woods between 7 and 9 o clock in the dark winter mornings, passing an abandoned house ruin, beeing the first ones that left their footprints in the snow that fell during the night and meeting some stray cats and sometimes even a dog we fed with our butty(s) was a really great adventure for us 5th graders in the 70´s everyone of the 5 boys and 4 girls that walked down that small path through the wood still remembers till today.
It learned (helped) us coping with animals, sharing food, protecting each other and the responsibility to get to that train on time when we were between 9 and 11 years old.
Freedom or the feeling of being free contributes to a less frustrated life. Who wants to be tightly controlled? The reverse is also true, frustration is the cause of anger and is the cause of fights.
But to show understanding to American parents, the most common cause of death of children is through mass shooting, if that does not blow your mind nothing will. Who would not be on edge, for their children's safety under those circumstance, this must lead to restrictions which leads to frustration on the part of the children. Parents want guns to protect their children, thus more Americans own guns than any other nation and it contributes to fear control and frustration.
The freedom to own guns is enshrined in the constitution, but that freedom can be changed and that is one of the reasons why America is divided today. Those who want to own guns, free of any restrictions, will also be GOP supporters. That makes it imperative, for them, to keep the GOP with enough power to block anything more than "thoughts & Prayers" for those who lose their lives in this way. Worse still the GOP know this and use it not just to block gun control, but wage increases, climate protection and health care to mention a few.
lol that is how i went to school quite a bit.
I was taken to school on my first day in England, after that I walked, that was 2 weeks before my 5th birthday.
Its remarkable how little we see kids out and about here in Canada. They are bussed or driven to school, to activities and seldom go out without a parent.
We've created communities that are focused almost entirely on cars and trucks. Pedestrians and cyclists are an after-thought if thought of at all. Most "bike lanes" are merely some paint on the road next to multiple lanes of speeding traffic. And those lanes are routinely blocked by parked cars. Sidewalks are blocked by snow much of the year – roads are plowed immediately after snowfall while sidewalks are left for days. And people park their cars on the sidewalk all the time.
I can understand if parents here don't want to give their kids more autonomy and let them walk or ride to school.
For me, when I was just a German child, it was the most common thing to take the bike to meet a friend from another village after learning how to ride a bike. I never expected that it could be so different in other countries and Hollywood movies looked so surreal to me. The school buses seemed so dated and worn out to me and as a child I never understood why the children in the films were never allowed to travel alone or cycle to the next town.
I biked to school from the age of eight.
And that was considered late because I lived some years in the Caribean before moving to the Netherlands.
From the age of about 8-9 my parents haven’t driven me anywhere. I would bike everywhere on my own up to about 5km.
Friends, swimming lessons, music lessons, shops, the barber, friends inside the village and living on farms in the countryside.
It was expected I would go everywhere on my own. From the age of 12 I would even ride the train to our closest city.
I dont know if this is just European, but I know its "germanic", or all of Scandinavia and central/northern Europe. It may be simply because of access to nature and historical requirements for survival, versus great urban countries such as megapolis America where that is naturally less relevant. Or sumtin
Your kid shouldn't wear a bike helmet on the playground, when playing in equipment, the helmet can get stuck, and thats considered dangerous
i am 26 years old and i have never seen a restaurant in germany, that would not have at least one high chair. Also you are always able to order an empty plate for the child, so the parents can give some of their meals to the little one. this has the interesting side effect that the children are always introduced to food that is not necessarily "suitable for children". whether they like it is of course another question.
Listening to this video makes me feel like I was raised similarly in the US. From 2nd grade on, I ride my bicycle to school everyday or wherever I wanted to go. I was and am prideful on my independence!
I'm grateful of the many liberties I was given by my parents to do what I wanted to do on my own!
When I began school at 4 years old I walked to school with my brother. By age 11 I rode my bike to school a couple of miles away on my own. By age 13 I would ride out into the countryside 30 km or so from home. And while I was still 14 I put on a pack and rode around our state camping on my own. Of course there were plenty of occasions to take the tram to the city for the dentist or other service. I had FREEDOM. Something that "free" kids in the USA can never know.
Only the USA have a clown named Pennywise.
Compared to the time when I was a kid nearly 40 years ago there is a lot of helicoptering nowadays. Back then there were no parents at the playgrounds with us. If we even were at the playground, mostly we just headed of into the woods to build some shack (Bude) or build little dams in some small creek. We were about 7 to 8 years old at that time. There is a lot less of that today.
Well, I am from Germany. When I grew up, I saw other children which were trusted with far less freedom than me and later in my life I observed tendencies that the independence of children on average seems to decrease here (though that is by no means a linear trend). That was and still is one of the scariest factors in the development of society. Children can develop like prisoners or like people and it is usually very obvious which children are treated more the one way or the other in their general life. There is plenty room for improvement in that regard here in Germany. I do not know the US-situation first hand, but your comparison paints the picture of a dystopian, dysfunctional nightmare in my eyes.
I took the buss and the ferry to and from my school from 7 years old. Granted the buss in the morning was an extra buss because ALL the school kids went at the same time but home you had to get the ordinary buss with everyone else. That was in Sweden
I was big game hunting alone, roaming over several hundred acres, at 9 years old. Would the population density needed for mass transit allow this freedom?
If you teach a child to be a child, they will end up as a child.
If you teach a child to be an adult, they will end up as an adult.
If you think you need to protect children from adulthood, then you possible need to reevaluate what you think being "an adult" means
To talk about food for kids in german restaurants, I highly recomment the "Räuberteller" the "robber plate". When you order for your kid you´ll get a plain plate und your kid is robbering. food from YOUR plate. I always liked the thought of "Räuberteller", so nice 😍
You ever notice how adults in the English world (Canada, USA, England) act like children WELL into their 20's now? It's because as a culture we never taught them how to act any other way. Treat them like kids, and they will act like kids for far longer every generation.
That's why we moved back to Germany when my son was three years old after living in the States for 13 years. We wanted more freedom for him and he was free to roam our village at the age of 5 or 6, meeting friends and walking to his grandparents. Now he's 12 and his action radius is growing steadily. I wanted this freedom for him, being gone for hours with his friends playing in the forest or cycling around. He would have been a "prisoner" in Texas until the age when he had his drivers license.
6:32 Two different towers, why?
USA the land of the free and freedom…is what I read/heard some American say on another channel. A European wrote in the comments, that we are free in Europe too and he was wondering what the American thought he had that we didn't. This tile alone just makes me think how free are Americans really if you have to worry constant about your kids, pay huge amounts just to have a kid…to me that makes you a slave of the American system.
This is entirely not true. I am always shacking my fist and yelling, "Hay you hooligans, get off my lawn!" as all the elementary school kids walk past my house to school and back home from school.
Well… no… The part of me yelling at the kids to get off my lawn is not actually true. But them walking to school is true. I have an elementary, middle, and high school all within walking distance from my house. That will be a great selling point to get higher rent if I ever decide to move and rent out the house.
My husband and I visited our daughter, son in law and two grandchildren, 8 and 11, in northern Italy where they live for 5 weeks. During that time we spent a week in Innsbruck and the Allgäu region of Germany. The things you’re talking about were exactly the striking things to us. Children walking about alone. Many, many recreation and play sites designed for not only children but inviting adults and children to play TOGETHER. We had a blast hiking, riding mountain coasters, going to the beautiful Innsbruck zoo, and sometimes even visiting castles. We rested, talked, walked everywhere, and loved every minute of this magical time. My grandkids are very interested in languages and tried to learn essential German phrases in the short time we were there. And the people were so kind, dignified, and caring. But the striking thing was the obvious care for children.
This is BS.
I live in Utah and its car dependant and kids are independent and have no issue traveling around.
In fact if you go to chic fil a a 4 year old will probably be taking your order.
The reason you don't see kids in the us OR germany is because they dont have any kids.
don't forget that you're talking about a benefit that came from ethnic cleansing, though.
how many of those kids who are freely cycling around the community are Jewish?
I saw a news story here on Youtube recently about a five year old girl that was chased by a coyote in front of her house. Allegedly not a common thing in that place. Picture a standard US suburb with a front lawn and driveway, outside of Chicago.
In the comments a lot of, I’m assuming, Americans were questioning why a five year old was allowed to play outside the house by herself. That thought was completely alien to me. Can you imagine what a neurotic generation you would foster if five year olds weren’t allowed to do that? Especially in a calm middle class neighbourhood. Kids need to be taught independence.
I think that one if the reasons, playground in German (or Denmark) are "less safe" and have less complains, is because it is gre to see a doctor or go the the hospital if an injury occurs.. so parents en general are more willing to let there kids hurts themself a little more to learn..
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