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.

    • Hadriscus@lemm.ee
      5·
      1 year ago

      Sand. It’s coarse and rough and it gets everywhere, but that shouldn’t stop you from learning to swim, it can be made easy. Start by practicing floating and familiarizing yourself with the medium. Being at ease is essential, so stay wherever the waterline reaches your shoulders. Breathing is an important part of the ordeal, because full lungs keep you afloat. Breaststroke and sidestroke are good starting points, whichever resonates more with you. Personally I think sidestroke is better because it’s very smooth and the body falls quite naturally into this position (look it up on youtube for tutorials, it’s very simple). Last but not least, we learn by playing, so have fun. 😀

            • Hadriscus@lemm.ee
              2·
              1 year ago

              Next time you can try lying flat on your back in even less water depth, let’s say around the belly? Try keeping afloat by focusing on your breathing (you can look up inverted breathing), and when you feel like you’re dipping too much, your legs can always correct course by contacting with the floor. It depends on your morphology, but arms extended up and hands above your head works well for me (the position babies sleep in). Then tilt your head backwards a little, chest puffed, let your back arch naturally. That’s my method, you can try it

    • kmkz_ninja@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 year ago

      I can’t help but commend the legitimately useful comment above me, but also, yes.

      Yes, swimming is more complicated than I could possibly understand because I knew how to do it before I knew what I was doing. I’m a native English speaker, so I understand privilege, but swimming seems like such a primal thing to not be able to perform. I have a relatively close friend who can not swim and is scared of open water. It’s weird to me. Maybe there’s a privilege to swimming ability in America, but he’s a white dude, so it’s weird.