Former Dutch kid here (45 yo 😅) and current teacher. For me growing up, the independence and trust I got made for a very happy childhood. From age 6, I was allowed to cycle to school independently. I remember vividly exploring the country side and the woods and making rafts from age 10-12. Age 15 I went abroad on holiday with a friend, taking public transport. As a teacher at an international school, I see the Dutch students are great at self-expression, critical thinking, open-mindedness and being independent compared to other nationalities. Which definitely can be a pain in the butt as well - especially for my none-Dutch colleagues. 😋 Dutch kids are not afraid to share their opinions and will try to negotiate almost everything.
I'm a teacher and when I get a new class at the beginning of the school year, I can instantly tell which kids had a good breakfast and cycled to school and which kids were shoved out of Mom's car with a bag of chips 5 minutes prior...
When we talk about school lunches here in Denmark, I always say I'd rather we focused on starting the day with a propper meal, in a calm and friendly atmosphere. Then they are "teachable" for at least the next three hours 🙄 If they haven't had a successful learning experience BEFORE lunch, we've lost them anyway...
I grew up in the 70s and 80s in Germany. I have loving parents, who had arguements and found solutions without getting loud or swearing. We had three meals a day together, when we grew older, school and work schedules reduced the number, but one meal a day spent together was always achieved somehow. Our parents were supportive, they told us their opinion, but often (if we could not get hurt or into serious trouble) they let us do what we wanted to do. If we failed, we never in our lives heard a "told you so", but they comforted and encouraged us. My sister and I are in our 50s now and yet, we see our parents several times a week, we support them with cleaning, grocery shopping and gardening, or driving them places. We love going on vacation with them or on day trips. We are so appreciative of our happy childhood, feeling safe and knowing that our parent will always be there and will always love us, no matter what - I get tears in my eyes when I think about it and I am thankful beyond words. I tried to provide the same childhood for my son, but unfortunately, his father moved out when he was 4. And again, the family was there, supporting us, my father taking him to soccer practice, when my work schedule interfered, my mother watching him, so I could cure a bad cold, do housework or even just go grocery shopping by myself. My sister and brother-in-law taking him over night, so I could just get some rest. He'd come home from there or from my parents house full of happiness, stories of his adventures and sometimes a new book or toy that I could not afford to buy for him. Family is everything for me. And now that my son is grown and I found a new partner who is a widower and who makes me very happy, I am trying to give what I received at home to him and his young teenage daughter: a home, a family and happiness - I hope I succeed, because happiness and feeling safe is the most important thing for any child. For anyone, for that matter.
Great video! You missed a few important things in your morning ritual and beyond (based om my upbringing). 1: You both didn't eat with the children. 2: You prepared the slice of bread in the kitchen, not at the table (it's important for the child to see the work as they want to emulate that). 3: You didn't cut the bread in small, eatable pieces (cutting it holding your fork in the left and knife in the right hand and no switcheroo), it's how they learn table manners. 4: I had a small set of knife (not sharp), spoon and fork (with a rabbit at the end). I used the fork to pick up a piece of bread and put it in my mouth (emulating my parents). 5: I wasn't the center of attention. When my parents spoke I had to wait and listen until they where done, after that I could talk and they listened. I was an integral part of the family and as important as anyone else at the table. 6: Not everything was a discussion. Rules where rules, sure I could vent my opinion but there was an end to it. 7: Freedom goes with trust and when I abused that trust my freedom was taken away, no discussions there either. I had to earn the right for the freedom back by being exemplary to win back their trust.
It also surprised me to see the parents at the breakfast table without anything to eat, watching their children eat. I was born in 1965 in Germany and we always had all meals together at the dining table. It was even a bit too strict for me, like dinner was at 6 pm and no matter what I did at the time, I had to drop everything, say good bye to everyone, because it was dinner time. After my father retired and I became a teenager, my mother prepared breakfast for me in the evening so I could get it early in the morning, as they wanted to sleep longer. Which was perfectly fine for me, she still prepared it :)
I have to disagree with you. A few things that come to my mind: - You don't have to cut the bread into small pieces. The kids can either do that by themselves or just hold the slice in their hand and eat it bite by bite. At least once kids can really communicate it's best to let them do things by their own and just offer them help when needed. Of course anything that's being done for the first time or first couple of times is exempt from that as is anything where they can really hurt themselves. But if the worst they can do is just not get it done, let them try for themselves first and just say "Just tell me, when you need my help". - Including kids in a discussion and valueing their opinion doesn't mean there are no hard rules. No riding a bicycle without a helmet. No playing with electricity. No crossing the street without me (or mom), etc. Also there are times when there is no hard rule but it's still not debatable what we do, for whatever reason. BUT: kids should always be allowed to ask why. When I say no it means no. But kids don't see the world the same way us adults do. They don't know that electricity is harmful. They don't know how much it hurts if you land head first on the street. In our house the rule is: when mom and/or dad say "Don't do this/that/whatever", then you don't do it - because we have good reasons to say so. But these reasons are no secret, so you can always ask "Why?"
I agree with points 1 and 2, but cutting bread into pieces with a knife and fork?? That's not how we eat bread in Europe. Cutting bread into bite-sized pieces is seen as a bad parenting habit, except if the children have problems with their teeth (like when their baby teeth are about to fall out, because chewing with wobbly teeth isn't fun). And children shouldn't be considered more or less important than adults when it comes to dinner table conversations. Making children wait until the adults have had their say is just as weird as making the children the sole center of attention. Just treat everyone with respect and the children will learn to do so as well.
Good points! To be honest, a lot of your points are very fair. We mostly do eat breakfast with the kids but a lot of these rituals are adapted because we were not in our "normal house". For example, this morning we made coffee, but normally eat yogurt with the kids. But I might push back on is #3. My 3.5 year old would likely die if I cut up his bread. He LOVES bread and is very specific that he only eats it whole. Now other foods, sure he eats with a fork and knife just fine.
As a Dutchie myself, it is good to see these things through the eyes of an "outsider". I notice that I find most of the issues you bring up so normal that I don't even see them as anything special. Seeing it through your eyes makes me realise how good my partner, I and the children have it here. Thank you. Great video 👍
Did something change since 20 years? Those I knew where the most government screwed children I knew, who weren't free at all and their well-being came from traveling abroad to speak freely. Maybe it's relative.
I felt exactly the same at first. But then I remembered other countries don't have hageslag. You can never have happy children without hagelslag. It has to be the hagelslag.
@@foobar8894We may not have Hagelslag, but we share a 567 km long border with you, which is - thanks to the Schengen Agreement - only a line on a map which can easily be crossed to go shopping. Greetings from Germany!
I'm 63. I grew up in the sixties and seventees. As far as I can remember I could ask my parents really any question and get a real answer at a level suiting my age. They never told my I was too young to understand something or any other reply just to make my question go away. So at the age of 4 (it was somewhere in 1965) I saw Fidel Castro on the news. As a small child I didn't understand anything of what they were saying. So I asked my mother and she explained to me who Fidel Castro was and from what country he was the leader and that he wasn't a nice man.... Nowadays we have the 'Jeugdjournaal' a special newsbulletin on tv for kids from the age of 5 to around 12. They present important (also international) newsitems in a way younger kids can understand it. Don't be surprised if they are covering the 2024 presidential elections in the USA.
My primary school best friend's parents were communists, in the 80's. Party members who went to Romania on vacation every year and brought back the of course superior canned food I got to taste too. That's also part of it, my friends came from different religions than my parents, different class, different education background, different wealths, politcal convictions, ethnic backgrounds, so you had to adapt when the parents had called your parents that you stayed for dinner. But what was always the same that the whole nuclear family ate togehter a the dinner table and it was normal to be asked about your opinion on a variety things by those parents too.
"Don't be surprised if they are covering the 2024 presidential elections in the USA." The United States of America is the country where you have to get really really really old to become president, but it does not matter how smart you are.
Just this week the company AFAS announced that they would close their offices on Fridays to give their employees the day off and do other things. They switched everyone to four day workweeks without adjusting their pay. People who already worked four days will get a raise to match their colleagues. They are really at the front on this topic realizing that their employees are more than just robots but people with lives outside the workplace.
I lived in the Czech republic until the age of 11 and was allowed a lot of freedom to roam and to be independent while feeling taken care of. It made me a very happy child. Then we immigrated to the US, and happiness became something I struggled to feel again for a very long time. There were some fleeting moments, and I tried to provide at least partially the type of childhood I had to my 2 daughters. I was very judged by other parents for my lack of helicopter parenting. After 30 years of life there, I finally decided to leave, and have found happiness again in Northern England ( of all places) with my husband and younger daughter along for the ride 😁
at my (German) house, we always had breakfast and dinner together as a family. My father travelled a lot for work, so he would often leave early or be away for days or weeks working in foreign countries, but for my mon, my brother and I, we always had meals together and my father would join us if he was at home, too (and that would usually be three meals a day as we had school off midday and there was no dayschool as we often have it today - plus, mom was not working a regular job but taught evening classes at adult school). I completely agree, a regular routine and having meals together is really important for a child’s development. When I was an AuPair in New Jersey in the late eighties, I was flabberghasted by them rarely having a meal together. I can pretty much count the times we sat down together at a table to be holidays and sometimes Sundays, but apart from that, the parents NEVER had a meal with their children. I, as their AuPair, was proving that type of routine to them, which was, to me, pretty sad and a COMPLETELY new concept. Both parents were lawyers, both working a commuter’s distance away and worked long hours, so often, they would leave before the children were even up and - if lucky, be home before they went to bed. I did not have children myself, but I would NEVER have raised my children that way…
You have to realize it all depends on what school you go to and where you live. You go and look at statistics and most of the school shootings happen at public schools. In the US you have private and Charter Schools. Private schools you have to pay for. The majority of parents that send their kids to private school are extremely involved in their kids lives. Ypu go and look at statistics again and most parents of school shooters werent involved in their childrens lives (a lot of times it was a single mom trying to get by. One shooter wasnt this sterotype. His mom was very involved, but she died. He did the school shooting shortly after his mom died). The downside of private schools is it can be very very very expensive. There are also Charter schools. You don't have to pay to be in this kind of school, but they are extremely picky on the kids they take. Charter schools expect parents to be extremely involved. A lot of kids in Charter schools have both parents involved in their lives. My kids go to a German International Charter school in Florida (thank you, German government, for paying for my kids' schooling). The kids don't worry about that. It isn't difficult to shelter your kids from that kind of stuff. My kids don't know when a school shooting happens, when a mass shooting happens, when war is breaking out in other parts of the world, etc.
Europe isn't crime free, but even "bad areas" in Europe don't have anywhere near the violent crime that the US has in many places. Kids are SO much less likely to by killed in Europe by violence
I’m Dutch myself and I believe that Dutch parents want their kids to develop into independent, self reliant people who will make their own choices, and not necessarily be successful in terms of earning a lot of money or be the best at something. We do encourage them to DO their best, but not at all cost. We ‘re used to saying: as long as they’re happy, it’s fine.
Hagelslag is one of many toppings for bread. a slice of kaas, Gouda, peanutbutter, jam, or meat. Dutch parents generally have the approach that you must taste something first before you say you don´t like it.
This video is very recognizable. I am a Dutchman 71 years old. My parents always had time for their children, even in difficult times. They are especially proud of what we are as people and of course what we have achieved in our lives, but that is secondary to work status. They found it always very important that we were happy and would remain so during our lives.
As someone who grew up in the Netherlands this was very interesting to watch. There's still so much room for improvement in Dutch society that I sometimes forget about the things we already do quite well. Dutch parents are often told about the '3 R's' for raising kids: rust, reinheid, regelmaat (rest, cleanliness/hygiene, regularity/routine). We almost always had breakfast and dinner together as a family, and it was not uncommon for us to discuss a variety of life topics during this time or catch up with each other as we ate together. I started cycling to school by myself at a pretty young age too, which was easy because the school was in the neighbourhood and it was easy to avoid busy roads. Self expression and developing your own opinions is strongly encouraged both in school and by society as a whole, though at the same time there is an expectation to 'act normal/reasonably' (doe normaal) and not stray too far from commonly accepted norms. Kids are given a very reasonable amount of freedom and responsibility and are therefore also held responsible for their own actions (to the degree you can expect from a child) which fosters independence and self-confidence. My parents didn't put pressure on me or my siblings to excel at school, instead they fostered an environment where we could live up to our own potential, whatever the 'level', and make sure to balance it out with plenty of rest and time for fun after school stuff. For example, my sister was on the boundary between two different school levels, and she could've done the higher level if she had dropped one of her hobbies, but my parents found it more important that she did something she enjoyed rather than pushing for 'better' school results at the cost of her happiness. She eventually ended up going to university and getting a master's degree anyway later on. It may not have been the fastest way to get there but she did it in a way that balanced her priorities and the pace that was suited for her at the time. Also just like in Germany, kids in the Netherlands are part of everyday life, they aren't segregated away from the rest of society, they are an active part of it. For example, there's no 'family restaurants', you just go to regular restaurants with your kids. Kids see a lot of adults around them all the time in all kinds of places and start emulating their behaviour, life itself is your best teacher.
Just booked flights and hotels to take my kids to the Netherlands last night! I'm British and their Mom is half Canadian, half Dutch. I'm excited for them to explore their heritage and see how different it is to their current home in Canada. I grew up in the UK and the best thing about my upbringing was 1) having parents that had strong Christian values (we went to church every Sunday), but without being too legalistic about it, 2) that my parents supported my musical and artistic endeavours, 3) that I could walk/cycle to school and 4) I could play out in the road with my neighbours unsupervised (we lived in a private cul de sac), 5) My parents took me to lots of different countries around Europe and I was able to explore the world and see how other people lived.
European kids learn freedom so much earlier than American kids. In the UIS, getting a car is seen as "freedom," but so many friends of mine had to work loads of hours to afford the car and the insurance so really it wasn't freedom at all. I grew up until Age 12 in the Netherlands until my dad took us "on assignment" to the US for a year. One thing lead to another and we ended up never moving back. I would still spend around 6 weeks each summer visiting Family in the Netherlands. It was completely normal for me at age 13 and my sister age 15 to get on a bus to get the Amsterdam central station, buy a special youth discount travel "day out." It would include return train fare, the activity at the far end, and additional bus transfer as needed. We took multiple day trips all over the country. In the US or Canada that would literally be illegal and considered child neglect. Instead we had fun day trips and explored areas or museums all over the country. By the time I was 16 and she was 18 (she was graduating), we spent a couple of weeks with family in NL and then spent a month using a Eurorail to go all over Europe. Munich, Innsbruck, Salzburg, Vienna, Rome, Florence, Strasbourg and back to NL. We had to pre register for all our youth hostels and had to use Travelers checks as this was 1986 and credit cards were rarely accepted. We had a calling card (that cost at least a dollar per minute to use) and would call back to our parents in the US when we'd checked in at the next youth hostel. I still have amazing memories from that trip nearly 40 years ago. THAT was freedom. Traveling as teens using trains and public transport was so much safer than US kids taking a car somewhere.
Speaking as a German, most of our cycling culture comes from the Netherlands, so I'm happy to see them get some credit for it for once. ;) Really interesting video as always, and I love the fact that you mixed up the format a bit this time. I love your usual format, but this "holiday edition" is a nice change of pace.
Not only the biking culture, but also the bikes themselfs came from the Netherlands? Do apologize this rather bad joke, it's from a time long gone. If I admire one people making peace, amends and learning from the dark pages of their history, it's the Germans. I love your country and people, everytime I visit I intend to come more often.
Austrian millenial here. I loved my freedom to go anywhere by myself as a kid. My mum had an old car horn that she would honk if we had to come home. So as long as i stayed close enough to hear it i could go anywhere in the neighbourhood, woods and fields. Also i valued eating dinner (Abendbrot) together a lot. I would still come home for dinner as a teen and after that meet up with friends again.
I do concur with another commenter here, I was rather taken aback when you spoke of the family breakfasting together but you and your husband had only coffee … Now I understand that some people don’t like food in the morning (I myself didn’t eat in the mornings for most of my adult life), so I would suggest lunches and dinners together - because sharing food does bond. I think it’s something deeply archaic within humans, sharing food gives us a good, safe feeling. As a child & teenager we always sat at one table, eating breakfast, lunch and dinner together. My mother was a stay at home mom until I was around 14, my dad had a 90 minute lunch break (quite common back then), and came home for lunch every working day. (Of course “lunch” was our main meal of the day, a hot meal, and “dinner” was the usual bread, butter and cheese or sliced luncheon meats as toppings for the bread. And I wrote my bike to secondary school from the suburb to the town center, since I was about 10 years old. Before that, to grammar school, I walked or took the bus. Of course by myself. After homework was done, we played outside most of the time (cowboys and Indians was a favorite), we climbed trees, went sledding in the winter in little groups, we had to be home before 6 PM for dinnertime (when it got dark in the winter), and in summer we were often allowed to spend a bit more time outside after dinner. Of course, in secondary school there was still lot of learning to do after dinner, but by then we had mostly grown beyond cowboys and Indians … Our granddaughter in Switzerland just turned 4, she’s still accompanied by one or 2 parents to preschool and the big playground a bit further away, but in mid August she’ll start Kindergarten which (in the Kanton Zurich and some other Swiss Kantonen) is part of the regular school system and therefore mandatory, and we expect that she’ll walk by herself soon. And yes, they eat their 3 meals together resp 1 parent with her, as the parents are working shifts. Independence at an early age is encouraged.
When I was a school kid in the 70ies in Germany my dad worked mostly evenings and Saturdays, and my mother was a stay-at-home mom (partly due to her bad mental health being bipolar). So I remember clearly having breakfast together with both of my parents. Lunch on schooldays was from secondary school on eating alone (my parents had already had their lunch before dad left for work) but my mother sat with me and we talked about school, homework, and what I wanted to do in the afternoon. Dinner was mostly my mom and me, but when dad was home it was the three of us together. With my family (my kids are in their mid-twenties but still living with me) we did the same. Having all meals together if possible and keeping the kids company when they were late because of school. When my husband passed I adapted my cooking to when the kids returned from school. I rode my bicycle everywhere and independently from the age of 7. I didn't ride my bike to school because primary school was a literal 5-minute walk and secondary school was in the city center and we lived in the suburbs about 10km/6m away with lots of traffic and few bike lanes on the commute. But when in 8th grade my friends from the same suburb started to ride their bikes to school (at least in the summer from April to October) I followed suit, In winter it was still more convenient to use public transport. We now live even further away from the city and public transport is the better option for my kids to get to university and the company/trade school respectively than biking. All in all, I was a happy child and young adult. Unfortunately, my mother passed when I was 20, and my father and I got estranged after that and he was out of the picture for the rest of his life. My kids were not so lucky as my husband fell very ill when they were just 7 years old and had to watch him dwindle away until he passed when they were 14. Combine this with undiagnosed (till age 13) autism in one and just shy of diagnosing autistic traits in the other, they both haven't fully recovered but they are on a good trajectory because of the social safety net (Schulbegleitung - a person who was at my autistic son's side in school, after-school care, group therapy for one [all paid by the state or our heath care provider], big brothers big sisters for the other one [charity], and my in-laws helping out all the way).
: That was a truely great video. Being German myself I always find it fascinating how our Dutch neighbours do things differently from us but to great success. I didn't know parenting was also a part of it. To be fair I've have similar experiences growing up, what with the everybody at the dinner table and such, but there are key differences when it comes to sharing the family work-life balance that I find quite convincing, is better handled on the dutch side of the border. It's a great country and I absolutely adore their approach to bicycling! They seem to have build their social foundation to be very stable which is something I'm missing in Germany. Especially with the modern trend to "overthrow" anything traditional, but maybe that's just my bubble.
For me the most important part for my happiness as a child was something you touched upon. Don't know the exact words, but you said something like the child is a person by itself. Something I've always had a problem with is parents who treat their children as just something else they own, or even worse a second chance for themselves to reach their goals in life through their children. Yes, raising children in a way where children are allowed to form and express their opinions can seem more tiresome, but it is so much more satisfying and prepares them for the life they will have to live by themselves at some point. I'm not sure we'll be able to preserve these ways here in the Netherlands, as influences from other countries/cultures influence us as well, but I sure do hope so. Hope you had a great time during your life "Beneath the Waves" experience.
"They aren't big on cars", now personally... that is correct. However, the Dutch are just as much into cars as other people. We just think there is a time and place for anything. The place for cars is on dedicated roads outside of the city center. We do actually have one of the best, if not the best driveable country for cars. (there are sources, probably things like WEF and such)
My multinational family sat together at meals and I listened to the adults (not the kids) discuss work, news and world events, even music, religion and politics. They had lively discussions and I learned to be curious and open minded. I love the Netherlands! Over the years, I have found my Dutch friends to be fearless, honest, down to earth and fun. They have no problem saying what they think. Oh yeah chocolate sprinkles and vanilla fla were some of my favourite taste discoveries. It seems to me Americans prefer to experience life through the intermediation of screens. Let's hear it for Daddy Days ! Thanks for another great video topic. Happiness as a means to success. What a concept.
I've been getting my Sunday headbanging 🤘😆🤘 in during this video as I was constantly nodding my head to your experiences, arguments, and expressions. Couldn't agree more. My dad often worked four days of the week at his office more than 200 km away. So I only saw him on Fridays and the weekend. During the week my mom and I ate breakfast together after which we practiced our synchronous clearing the table and loading the dishwasher ritual. To this day, more than 40 years later, my mother and I still can harmoniously do this ritual. My 8 and 9 year older siblings had left the house when I went to middle school so I became in essence a lone child at home for the week. From Fridays to Sundays we grew from a two person family to five people. However, as usual, late teens, or rather young adults often have conflicting schedules with their parents so it often went that we didn't eat breakfast together. But lunch and dinner was often eaten together as a family.
My husband and I grew up in religious authoritarian families (in the US), and vowed to do differently for our our kids. We chose a path very much like the "negotiation parenting" you talked about, and while it was indeed hard work, our teenagers are pretty great. I wish we could have given them more independence as they grew, especially biking, but our town infrastructure is quite biking- and walking-hostile, so they're only now getting into biking as teens.
It annoys me when people act like the US obsession with children's sports is such a mystery. The motivation is extremely obvious. If a child becomes a sports star, they can get a university scholarship that will save many tens of thousands of dollars of future expenses. Edit: same with grades. I would have been way more relaxed about my GPA if I knew my university would be free regardless.
Dutchie here 🙋🏼♂️. As a father of three mini humans (aged 4, 3 and 1) I constantly have an open dialogue with my kids. I set boundaries, but they’re free to question these boundaries. When one of my kids asks me “why?” I set a specific boundary, instead of telling them “because I say so”, I tell them my motivation behind it and I give them the opportunity to have their say about it. It is up to me whether or not I love the boundary. But even if I don’t deviate from my boundaries, I still made them feel heard and understood. In return they learned that I had a pure intention instead of just being dominant and strict. My kids are well behaved little humans, but they aren’t submissive. They listen to me, because they know my intentions are good. And sometimes they don’t listen to me, because they’re kids and that’s just what they do. I try to be a positive father, although I too sometimes don’t feel like taking the time and effort to do it it this way. But in the end, this positive way of parenting is the shortest and most effective way of parenting, although it is quite exhausting and difficult. About the grit and determination: there’s a saying here that goes like “je bent toch niet van suiker gemaakt”, which translates to “you’re not made of sugar”. Rain won’t kill you, falling with your bicycle won’t kill you, you just have to keep going on and eventually you’ll get the hang of it. We don’t kidproof the heck out of everything either. Of course we make sure they won’t get electrocuted, but we’re not overprotective. By letting kids discover things themselves (and occasionally fall or hurt themselves) they’ll develop their ability to judge a situation and their own behavior. Let kids be kids. They’ll learn quicker and better than we can teach them. I don’t have a “papadag”, but I squeeze my fulltime job in 4,5 days, so I can have the Friday afternoon with my eldest kid (she’s out of school at noon). I’ll make her a tosti or I’ll make her an omelet and just spend the afternoon with her (only her, instead of also her two brothers whom are at the daycare). When my two other kids will go to school I’ll do the same with them. My wife works three days a week, so she is with the kids two days a week. I think this is quite a good balance. At least two of the days I work from home, so I can bring my kids to school/daycare and pick them up early and cook dinner so my wife doesn’t have to.
I am Dutch 60 years old. My parents were pre WW2. In some ways they were very strict. Obedience, decent haircut and good clothing/shoes and always be spot on time for all three meals for example. So no, not a negotiated upbringing here ! But, in some ways they were very lenient. I could as a 6 year old play outside, unsupervised, until the streetlights went on. At 12, I could cycle to a friend, and listen to music, play chess and have deep discussions until the sun came up. Provided, I did not get into trouble and did not oversleep and finished school with a diploma AND my parents knew where I was. If there was a change of plan for the evening/night, I had to call them not to ask permission, but to notify them. I kept all my parts of the bargain too. I even finished university. I was diagnosed with Aspergers at 50. So, my youth was not easy and I wanted to be alone in the woods lots of the time. I am still grateful that my parents gave me that space, without even knowing that something was "wrong". I never felt really at home, ended up divorced, but with a very job, a nice son and a stable personality. My world is in my head and it is balanced thanks to the "Dutch" upbringing style. As my parents were dead before I discovered this, I could never thank them for that. I did not fit them at all, but I am still grateful for their hard work with me.
I'm Dutch and grew up in a little village. I cycled alone to school when I was 6 or so. I remember mostly just playing with a lot of kids after school. My village was like an extention of my home. Yes I also had music lessons and sports, but that was not a central part of my upbringing. I never really considered how lucky I was to be able to learn at my own pace and not be in a rat-race with fellow students. My parents always said to me: even if you want to sell sausages on the street, as long as your happy, we are happy. And by the way, I have a very good job now. Because I liked what I was doing!
Another superb sequel of "Ashton Analytics" or why raising a child in a for-profit environment does not make too much gainz for their overall happiness.
In our family table top games, playing cards, board games etc have always been a very important family value that promotes a lot of very useful skills.
Perhaps because I didn't have a TV the first 9 years of my life, and observing my elders reading or having fun with card and board games with friends and neighbours, socializing this way after a main meal led me to feel at peace at home which also leads me to feel happy whenever such an occasion arises even nowadays, where making friends is a bit more difficult. Watching TV together was a "thing to do" in my teenage and young adult years. I still prefer this to watching alone as an adult. Not being able to go to school felt like punishment to me as a child. Sounds so strange to some, doesn't it? In my Dutch side of the family it was indeed important to have everyone at the table for most meals, and yes, aside from being encouraged to try new foods (at least one taste) every possible topic was discussed and we learned not to interrupt unless there was something important.
I'm not convinced that a slice of (European) bread with butter and a teaspoon of chocolate is more unhealthy than a bowl of US sugar pops cereal and long life milk - with added sugar.
As a child I definitely loved my chocolate sprinkles (on whole wheat European bread though, I never really liked white bread), but it was only one of the options. We always set the table with all bread topping options present. So I could choose what I felt like eating that day. Like cheese, meat, peanut butter or jam. It's one of the smal things in which I felt taken seriously as a kid. As soon as I was old enough to point at/articulate what I wanted, my parents let me decide for myself what I had om my bread.
In general, American cereals already contain far more sugar than cereals in Europe. If you compare the content information on the packaging, you can see that the sugar content in the USA is far too high.
Kids aren't eating that anymore unless it's a treat. They eat cereals with no sugar or 2 g of sugar. Milk isn't bad for you. Milk has 3 grams of sugar if organic. Kids don't take an entire serving size of milk for their cereal. They take 1/4 of the serving.
Former Dutch kid and current Dutch parent here. I had a lot of autonomy when growing up and my kids (4 and 6) get the same now. On Wednesday and Friday they are done with school at 12:30. While we have lunch, we talk about the activities we'll be doing in the afternoon. I usually have a list of chores to do, which they are welcome to help with. But it's not an obligation. Sometimes they go outside to play with friends at the playground nearby. Sometimes they go to their rooms to colour or will do something else in the house Sometimes one or both decide to help me, so I'm done with my chores sooner and we can do something together, like play a game or go a bit further than the playground (they're not allowed to go further by themselves, not because I don't trust them but because 4 years old is too young to venture into more car infested places without supervision and I don't want to put that responsibility on my 6 year old). Sometimes they play outside for so long that I don't see them until 4 (except at 15:00, because they know there'll be a small container of fruit waiting for them at home, which they can eat at home or take with them to the playground). And on those days, I get to kivk back with a book between the chores and dinner. It's great for all of us. An I've never understood how north American parents get anything done.
Good morning Ashton, any regrets about not moving to the Netherlands yet 😂 So nice of you to devote part of your vacation to making a video on our society and culture! There is lots to critice too though. Specially in your field of study. Did you have any frustrations or negative insights on your stay? I hope you will make a follow up video on the Netherlands for sure!
yeah like what about the racism. raising white kids doesn't seem that difficult to me anywhere. heard france was the best in europe because they have the least mandatory schools, but then again with the overall rise of fascism, i kind of doubt that europe is a good place for kids in the nearer future. except maybe in some tucked away corner without a lot of connection to the world...
@@sujammaz Lebanon. Look at what happend there,in the past. So if we would like to become an Lebanon 2.0,we need to listen to all that silly racism crab. Also,i can,t name any religion our race,who did nothing wrong in there own past. Yes yours and mine to. Thats why we Germanics hate hypocrisy.
Not only breakfast also diner we have as family together. We always have a lot of discussions during dinner. And drinking coffee together at 8 pm, with the news, biking to school, not for a special pedagogical reason. But because everyone did that. And still does. (Btw, this is the origin of the cycling infrastructure outside cities, it was always there. For all the kids that cycled to school).
15:31 Well, I also don't want to shade on *my* German friends who have kids, but … to be honest, after watching these issues for more than a decade, actually, I kind of do. We have a huge equality issue in Germany between men and women, that we ignore, because we usually don't talk about money. But not only we have a terrible gender pay gap, but we also do have a tax system, that really incentivizes married couples with a bigger income disparity for the partner that earns less, often not to work. And when raising kids, that very, very often means that mothers stay at home much longer and doing the care work. I remember very well, when the young, conservative secretary for families (from 2009 to 2013), Kristina Schröder, spoke about the 'freedom of choice' that parents should have, when deciding how care work would be split between both parents. However, this financial legal framework would in many cases instead lead to the man, who in many cases just earns more than the women, would only take an absolut minimum of 'Elternzeit' (parental leave). Conservatives in Germany until today fail to recognize, that for many couples there is no real 'freedom of choice', but also, for many men in Germany, there is not much reason to argue with their bosses about the financial inequality that is still a realilty in this country. And this is, where German men as a group, don't meet what can and should be expected.
The parenting makes the children think and rethink their choices. What went wrong and why. So would you do it again. That comes back when they are older. If you want a Dutch person to do something for you, than make sure they can see the benefit. If they do not, it will become a struggle to get it done. It is always: give me a good reason, than I will do it happily. So when kids are given choices on whatever, they will learn that some choices they have made, didn’t work out so well. And they probably do not want to take that route again.
Another good video with some good perspectives and lessons for parents, no matter the country. As an American, I have serious doubts if we can ever achieve this great work/life balance and not view anything involving our children as a competition.
As our productivity is median, per capita, it is one of the highest per working hour. Because we work only 29 hours a week. And I notice it in my own work environment. I’m often the only one at the office on Friday, because all part timers have Friday off, lots work from home on Friday, others work on a regional office near their home and there are always people having a day off or on holiday. I am one of the full timers with a 40 hour workweek, but with 49 vacation days in total, so in reality my workweek is just above 32 hours.
I'm age 59 and when I was a child my dad worked in construction and was from home during week days, sleeping in barracks on the construction site. Later he moved back to the coal mining industry and worked afternoon shifts only. So I didn't really see my dad during the week. In the weekends he was very busy with the vegetable and fruit garden and small farm animals, leaving only part of the Sunday free. That time would be spent watching sports on television. This means that my entire raising up was managed by my mom, who didn't have a job outdoors. That was how things were in the past, and means that I did have a much stronger bond with my mom as with dad. So I think it's a good thing that the daddies of today are allowed as much time with the children as mom, and that despite the dads working more full hours than the moms. Also, 4x9 hour working weeks aren't still the standard, often the 36 hours are planned differently and even 38 or 40 hour contracts do still exist in certain branches.
A really neat video of you. A certain TED presentation talked about the freedom kids have when playing outside. Parents are not overprotecting, leaving room for exploration.
Yes, we (speaking from the Netherlands) may have splendid ideas. Just don't overlook the good sides of Germany! The great thing is, that we all can discuss each other's ideas and maybe implement the "best practices". Besides, together we constitute some "what if" laboratory. If you should wonder about the good in Germany, just watch the documentaries on the regional broadcasts. RUclips recommendations keep me orbiting NDR, but at least SWF and BR do feature these too. :-)
4:21 *NHOOO* Don't open the entire top. You'll spill all the delicious _hagelslag_ if someone tips the box over. Open the spout on the side. Look for a small triangle or rectangle shape on one of the narrow sides of the box. Pull it out, but do *not* tear it off. Now you can close it when done sprinkling. 12:37 I usually didn't bother with rain clothes. The commute from school - to home was a bike ride of twenty minutes at most. From home to school was a completely different story, because mom believed you could get the sniffles in the rain and made me put on all the rain-repelling gear.
I believe the shortening work weeks started to free up some space on the labour market, to combat general employment back then but also to get some flow, dynamic in it. But the effect on work life balance was embraced and it's actually mostly about not excluding the part timers/4 days a week workers from having a career. But it's all connected. It's work/life balance and not necessarily work/rest balance. Those sport clubs the children go to have to be run by volunteers. The Dutch do more volunteering than any other people, whether it's charities or sports clubs, and you might have to chip in, do a bar shift at your kid's football club or referee a game. That wouldn't work with American unpaid displays of loyalty to the company by putting in more hours.
So happy you enjoy your time in the Netherlands. I went 10 years ago for a relative wedding. I have not see them in while. I hope to see them soon. The Netherlands has a way of life increase children happiness.
Hi Ashton, I recognised the location and holiday apartment right away. I live (and have lived all my life) in the neighbouring village and spend my whole childhood most weekends on the same lake as my parents owned a sailboat (where we could sleep as well) and a peace of land at that lake. It was only a bike ride away. I hope you enjoyed your stay. In the summertime it’s even nicer to come over, as you can swim and recreate on the lake and canals. If you were there earlier this year, the water temperature was probably too low, although we used to go swimming as of the Pentecost weekend. Have a nice day!
Great vid as always, this one hit me deep, because I tried myself as a father of two, to first have a focus on letting my kids be as happy as posible, then on them being "succesful" according to society scales.
22:36 What I appreciate about my upbringing (in Northern Germany) is, that I was respected and valued with my talents and faults. And I was not pressed to do sth 'because it is done like that', but the situation was taken into account and I could choose if it was reasonable enough. Support/motivation/consultation to find my path were given, but the choice was mine.
Dear Ashton, congrats for another excellent work. I lived and went to school in Holand, from my 8 to 10 years old, than, came back to Brazil. Uau, what a shock it was!
An important thing you missed in this video is about freedom dutch children have. Not being watched and monitored 24h. Playing outside with friends without supervision or from a distance. Going to activities without parents being there all the time. Be at home at dinner time. Or before it gets dark is a rule that many children have a ably to.
The rule most Dutch children know is that it's time to go home when the street lighting turns on. But even when they ignore that, most children will get hungry around their normal dinner time and head home anyway.
Great video. Yes hagelslag is part of happy kids. Give a woman chocolates and she becomes happy 😉 Something in chocolate sprinkles makes people happy. Brings back my childhood of hagelslag. It was hagelslag, cheese and peanut butter
We spent a lot of time figuring out where to live, and the final contenders were Freiburg and the Randstad (the Randstad one but Freiburg is still a great place!) Glad you were able to enjoy the Netherlands! To your question - weirdly enough my favourite part of my childhood in a California farm town was biking everywhere. It was different in the early 90's....
Ashton, nice video with a lot of recognizable aspects of Dutch life. On the style of parenting and discussing with your kids, it's part of Dutch decision making in public government... it's called "Polderen" derived from our "National" landscape consisting of polders (reclaimed land surrounded by dikes) and the way they usually came to be.. In that form of decision making it was required that everybody who had a stake in the process also had a say, thus preferring everybody's involvement and a high degree of consensus. And that's something you've got to learn from an early age. In Education attention to more relational issues is tought, depending on age. So learning to respect the other's boundaries also in the sexual realm and accepting the sexuality of others. Being a fully functional and social person is important, also because of the high density of people per square kilometer in this Country. About the Hagelslag breakfast.... well I know that characterization and it's not quite representative of the average Dutch breakfast. When bread makes a big part of breakfast, usually Hagelslag is on the table along with other usually sweet stuff. But granola and products like that are also common.
I'm a Gen-X-er from Canada, so of course my upbringing was very different from the way kids have been brought up for the past 20 or 30 years. We were very independent. For example, to get to school, you either waited for the school bus yourself, or you walked to school or rode your bike without parents. And I'm talking about 5 and 6 years olds. When I was 10, my 8-year-old sister and I would walk my 3-year-old sister to Montessori school, that was in a church hall about halfway the way to our school. Our school was about 3/4 of a km or 1/2 a mile from home. Any kid in my school would have been mortified to have their parents accompany them to or from school, or wait with them at the bus stop. What was fun, is that on the way home or to school, you would meet up with friends. So I would leave home with my 2 sisters, but by the time we got to school, 3, 4 friends would have joined the group.
A few years ago I read the book "The Year of Living Danishly." Really kind of fun and incredibly eye-opening as an American. Sort of depressing (because our culture is so _not_ egalitarian).
My upbringing in Germany wasn't much different and I am still looking back to a great childhood, even though I didn't have parents. I would not want to miss it for the world. I remember once, being 10-11 years old and we were in the forest at an old castle. We managed to get into what once was the holding cells for prisoners. We got in, but not out as it was to deep. We jelled for a while till some hikers came by and got us out of the misery;-) In todays world, this would be like absolut horrible. Parents didn't look after the kids, kids did things they are not allowed too and so much more. In the US, this would even make national news. Looking at my grand kids in the US, I can just cry every day on what a horrible life they have and that the US as a whole does not see what horrible environment we created for them. They are brainwashed and just do what others tell them, not thinking for a second if it is wrong or right. I tried to fix that, but the overall system and how things are is just to strong for me to push against.
It all depends when you were brought up in the US. 2000's is when kids were limited on what they could do alone. My brother and I have done far far far worse things than getting stuck in an old prison. This is tame. The worst thing my brother and I did was when I was 7 and he was 10. We took the powder from firecrackers and place it into a plastic bottle. We would stop when we had 6 grams of flash powder (yes Florida kids used grams). When we got our amount we would put a fuse in the water bottle, light it, and run like hell. We left a few holes in our backyard and killed a few birds. We told our mom "I don't know how the holes or dead birds got there." Our mom was shopping while we did this. We would also take dry ice break some off with an ice pick, place in Gatorade bottle, put cap on, shake like crazy, and throw. It would explode. It really wasn't dangerous unless you touched the dry ice or had shards of plastic hit you. My brother and I spent a good chunk of our freetime with explosives. Police would drive by and see us playing with explosives and we only got "be careful with the explosives. You can seriously hurt yourself or others." Police knew we were under 18 (in Florida you have to be 18 to use fireworks or explosives). Nowadays kids would be taken away from parents if kids were caught playing with fireworks or explosives alone.
socialization is SO SO SO important!!! everytime i hear an american parent talking about how they do or might homeschool their kids, i automatically cringe inside. all i hear is "my kids will probably only really socialize with US. at home. and they will probably be really lost when it comes to human interaction with people who arent the ones they spend all their time with already." idk im just so glad that youre not allowed to do that in germany.
😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Homeschooled kids have socialization. They have neighborhood kids, team sports, homeschooled kids do field trips with other homeschooled kids, there's summer camp, girl scouts, boy scouts, and even homeschool parents that invite other homeschool kids to their house and do some schooling together. Studies have shown that homeschooled kids are better with socializing than mainstream kids. I was home schooled and I always had some kid to play with that wasn't my brother. I went on field trips, did group projects with other homeschooled kids, and I was in the Girl Scouts, and I was on the swim team.
@@jessicaely2521 the problem with all that is just thats its not in any way monitored by a government body. so as a homeschooled kid, you just have to be lucky that your parents care even a little bit about exposing you to different people. also, its still not the same. there are a lot of different developmental things that happen in a school that just dont happen in summer camp or boyscouts or group sport. also lol please show me that study lmao
@jannecapelle_art 😂😂😂😂 again you're running you're mouth without knowing what the laws are. Most states do monitor homeschooling. There's only 9 out of 50 states that dont care. Kids have to take tests at the end of every year to make sure they are onpar with kids from mainstream schools. Also parents HAVE TO keep a portfolio of what their kid did in the year. The government looks it over. Majority of states you have to cover reading, math, spelling, grammar, and citizenship. In Florida you have to give yhe government paperwork for intent of homeschooling, you have to turn in a portfolio with what you did, and your kid has to be tested at the end of the year.
@@jannecapelle_artThomas Edison, Alexander Grahm Bell, Wright Brothers, Serena Willams, Venus Willams, President Thomas Jefferson, Susan B Anthony, Florence Nightingale, Albert Einstein, etc were all homeschooled. Studies have proved that most homeschooled children are smarter than mainstream school children.
@@jannecapelle_artNational Home Education Research Institute has proven home-educated typically score 15 to 25 percentile points above public-school students on standardized academic achievement tests. Public schools, private schools, and charter schools have a lot of children (20-30). There's no individualized attention on things you don't understand. There's individualized attention when you are homeschooled. The reason I was homeschooled is because I wasn't doing well in mainstream schools. Kids would always interrupt class, teachers didn't have time to help me on a individual basis, and some teachers just didn't know how to teach a child with learning disabilities. I went from getting C's and D's in school to getting A's. The reason is my mom and dad knew how to teach my learning style. I took the way my parents taught me and applied it to University. If my parents didn't teach me I wouldn't have been a physical therapist because I wouldn't be able to get through the work because I didn't know how to teach myself and how to study.
I grew up in South Africa. My parents were always proud of what I did. ( I grew up without tv. because when I was a child South Africa did not have tv. there my family left 1975 and came back to Germany .That was such a social shock for me. So have a nice week greetings 😊😊
I grew up in the US eighties, in a single parent household. I would say I had a much happier, healthy upbringing than kids get here today. We could walk to school on our own, we often ate meals together and had discussions about news, politics, etc. I played little league, but also went to the roller rink on Wednesday evenings, parents dropped off/picked up, but they didn’t stick around to monitor us. Kids got together on their own in the evenings to play. School was just school, I didn’t earn college credits, I didn’t feel pressure to perform. And I didn’t do shooter drills. I’m curious what the cell phones and social media rules are in the Netherlands. It seems pretty toxic here for kids.
Amen. 80's to mid eaely 2000's were fantastic as a kid. Every evening we played street hockey in the street. I still can hear us kids yelling car. All clear. I loved going out on our (I had an older brother) little rubber boat and picking up neighbor kids during the summer. We would be gone for 12 hours doing all kid stuff. We would ride our bikes everywhere unsupervised. On our 26 ft sailboat our dad would give my brother and I 20ft of rope each and say "have fun." There was no social media bullying, no school shootings, no worries in general.
I don't know where the study at 4:00 comes from, but it is definately not Nordic, as they have switched the Swedish and Danish flags. Congrats on another interesting video I didn't know I would need (from Denmark)
Saturday was candy day "Karkkipäivä" for us (also the day we went shopping every week as a family) so me and brother always got the choice of 200g of candy or 2€ As a small child I wanted the candy, but I lost my sweet tooth in my early teens so I started taking the money instead. It made me happy and proud of myself that I only ate candy if someone offered it to me
I have two kids. And when they had to choose what school is next at about 11/12 yo. There is the school with a advise about the level. Of course there is your own thoughts about it. But in the end we have let the kids make the decision. I knew my daughter could do a higher level but knew too, that she would not be happy. So why should i push here somewhere and make an unhappy kid? Important was that she could explain why. For my son it was the same. Talk with your kids with argumentation. And respect the wishes. And on a certain moment put your proud a side and be happy.
Welcome to my country and thank you for all the positive words. Funny, I never thought about any of the things you talked about. But I suppose the vast majority is also what I experienced. My grandmother even told me: happiness is the most important thing in live (and love). To enjoy the small things. And yes, we tend to have fairly strong opinions that we like to share. I just never realised that these things were so specifically Dutch really.. I AM really happy my parents only required me to do sports. I could choose WHAT KIND, but we had to exercise. I think the part time working part is changing. More towards the US system. Work more, less vacation, higher workloads, etc... Germany seems to do better there I guess...
I don't have kids but that it had to be stated explicitly that children are primarily their own little person, not a reflection of their parents feels eerie/ uncanny
I did not hear what I think is far more important than breakfast together or the other topics mentioned: appropriate parenting. Self control and self reliance are the most important skills to teach for the child experience happiness and success. I mention this from the perspective of a marriage to a "permissive parent" - someone who felt that making children happy in the moment by giving them what they want in the moment was a priority, walk away or ignore any misbehavior, treat discipline from the other parent as a misfortune to be countered with a treat, never require responsibility or give consequences. Children in this environment were perpetually unhappy, and when isolated from that parent (due to a vacation trip without her), became happier when rules and consequences were spelled out and responsibility for action demanded.
The focus on learning to think and be independent, or at least, to be able to give your input, gives children the basis to be able to decide what they really want to do, in all aspects of their lives. And to choose something that really fits them, and not just the expectations of society. To be clear, it's not as if The Netherlands is somehow a paradise. There are definitely people who parent differently, people who are "helicopter parents", or "tiger parents", or "curling parents", there are people who value the type of school, diploma, who push their kids to do 20 activities, hobbies, and sports, but this is mainly about general trends. Kids who learn that they are trusted to make decisions at a young age, learn to trust their own judgement or find out why their choice was not the best one with low stakes. It might by uncomfortable to wear that fluffy unicorn onesie when playing in the sun, but the child will find out fast why their parents told them it might be too hot to wear that onesie. So they learn that sometimes there is a better choice, and what the consequences are if they choose something that's not the best option. And the very low stakes mean that a child doesn't suffer from learning that lesson. Being hot for a little while is uncomfy, but it's not dangerous. Making a bad decision for bigger issues when you're older tends to come with bigger and worse consequences. So children learn the results of their choices impact them, they learn that sometimes they should listen to advice, and they learn to incorporate what they learn later on. Children learn how to weigh the options, they learn compromising, "I love my unicorn onesie, but I also want to play outside in the sun, so maybe the onesie is better for inside when I'm sitting down". And it's also not as if parents just push their kids onto a bike and say "go to school!", they start by going with their child, and then by giving the child the illusion of independence (same with the onesie example, oh, it's too hot for your onesie? Good thing I brought a t shirt!) by cycling a bit behind their child to keep an eye on things for a while. So the child feels independent, but there is that safety net of their parent if something happens. When you learn how to make up your mind and how to decide for yourself very young, you will be able to do so much easier when you're older. It's a skill, and if you develop it early you'll reap the benefits later. This also helps with teens being reckless and thoughtless, it's not that Dutch teens are somehow not going through puberty, or make bad decisions when they're teens, but at that point they've been learning how to make choices, and what the consequences of their choices are, and typically they get the information they need to make such decisions, so they are more likely to be able to decide what they want to do, rather than following the peer pressure. Of course, there is still peer pressure, people are people still, but having the skills to navigate that makes it much easier for teens. The negotiation and decision making at a young age also helps with showing kids that they are trusted. This means that kids are honest about what's going on in their lives, and this also means that parents can guide their kids. If a child feels like their parents will always choose for them, and will not listen to their opinion, they are more likely to just do what they want without any input from their parents, and keep their lives a secret. A child keeping some small secrets from their parents is normal, and more privacy as children age is normal, but it's not normal to keep big events a secret, and can be very dangerous, and can mean that a child feels they cannot tell their parents about things that should never be secrets. Being trusted also builds confidence, trust in their own skills to make choices and their skills to navigate difficult situations. And something that is sort of a side effect, but also very important, a child who is able to say what they want and who has learned that their parents will allow them to choose when possible, will be less likely to stay quiet when they encounter abuse of any kind. If a child has learned that they are allowed to say what they want, they are more able to spot someone who wants to bulldoze over their boundaries, and they are more able to defend those boundaries. Both as a child, as well as an adult. This is the ideal situation, and it's not that all children learn to be confident etc, and abuse still happens, sadly, but giving children the skills to keep themselves safe helps a lot.
Gday Ashton, thank you for your surprising video. Well done Netherlands for leading the way in this statistic. However I don’t have any complaints about my childhood and my grandchildren also seem to be living their best lives. I feel the elements that support childhood happiness are feeling safe and loved in the family unit, access to a good education , exercise and nutrition, access to good health facilities and living in a safe and cohesive community/ country.
I'll never get how you get weird looks for chocolate sprinkles, but in the next second those people take a bite from their bowl of cereal that contains even more sugar.
It doesn't necessarily have sugar or its extremely low. My kids have cereal and the only sugar that's in it is milk sugar. There's cereal that kids enjoy that has no sugar. Cheerios has 2 grams of sugar. Chocolate sprinkles has more than that. The sprinkles I have has 8 g of sugar.
I was born in the early 60s. When you mentioned all of the activities that American kids are involved in, it made me think of how different that was to my experience. I mean, sure, we did have Little League and scouting. But there was also a lot of unstructured activity. Here I'm thinking of sports. In the summer (and actually during the school year as well) it was quite common for a bunch of my friends to head down to the local park to see if we could get a pickup baseball game going. That seems incredibly rare these days. When the organized portion of the baseball season is done, those local baseball diamonds are completely empty. It's sort of sad.
I Iive in Berlin I see many Men with the children. I am a nurse and I absolutly cant work in home Office. Or less hours . Yes you are so right social happyness are soo important it bringst you much further many greetings from Christiane.😊😊
Hagelslag, peanut butter, marmalade, nutella, speculaas ( a ginger cookie) on bread, cheese of course etc. But not on white bread. Children already cycle to school from year 7 if the child is ready for it. They play outside unattended from year 5-7 depending on the child.
Overall wonderful but I do have to push back on one point you made. I think it's inaccurate to say that the Dutch aren't big on cars. Apparently the Netherlands is also the best place in the world to be a driver. And one of the reasons it's so great is that they don't make everyone do it for every trip.
Love your RUclips content. Funny thing is You have these steps in the videos that feel like that the video is ending while in reality it just halfway..
White bread was not a part of our breakfast. Volkorenbrood with choclatepast not Nutella or sprinkles but allso peanutbutter an appelstroop or jam. For lunch we ate volkorenbrood with cheese and boterhamworst.
I won't argue that Dutch kids are the happiest. Not just that, but the most confident. Like everyone I've seen those videos of schoolchildren cycling to school on their own - well, with loads of other school kids. Not a parent on the 'school run' in sight. But does that make them happy adults? I've visited many times. I like the Dutch. They seem much the same as us Brits. But what has happened to their politics? Never mind all the extremist parties, they have a political party for everyone, whether you are a leftist, rightist, commie, fascist, Catholic, Protestant, farmer, townie.
It is weird to me that you talk about having breakfast together, while we see all you have is a coffee. The sharing of food is a bonding experience that goes back thousands of years. It shows trust, if anything. And trust means a better bonding and being at ease. It is nice knowing the person you seat with in your cave is not going to kill you. And it sets examples. So eat while the kids eat. It does not matter if it takes more time. It is time you spend together. One of the best memories of me as a kid was the time together at the table. Just talking and sitting there. And obviously eating together at the same time. This also translates to eating out. It is the social part that is way more important than the food. For kids it teaches social skills. And we had dinner at 18:00. The fact that cell phones did not exist, or that I had no watch was no excuse of being late. So it taught being responsible and when being late, it taught that there are consequences for actions. Eating together is so bonding that the thing you are most likely to do with a potential life partner is eat together. A date often is similar as the first time going to a restaurant together. And the first time you cook for a partner is a huge step. The fact that it was burned does not matter. The fact that you shared food is the important part. So even if not possible during the week, do it during holidays and weekends.
An interesting difference between Dutch and American parenting is shown in the book 'Not under my Roof' by Amy Schalet. It describes the ways Dutch and American parents are dealing with first relations and sexual experiences of their adolescent children.
Breakfast together is normal in the netherlands but the children dont eat each day the same. Mostly they choose self en the parent stimulatie to choose to choose different breakfasts
In many ways, unhappy children are just the symptom of unhealthy society. 1. High inequality, low social mobility. Low salary, poor working condition and low social respect for vocational workers. Narrow definition of successes. These lead to unreasonably high academic pressure in school and out-of-control private tutoring during weekends and nights, which results in high myopia rate among children and not enough sleeping time. 2. Overly long working hours, no subsidized childcare. ->High workload for parents. Children have little time to spend with their parents. 3. Authoritarian government and social structure. -> Critical thinking and social skills inadequate among children. Children are taught not to question, analyze, express themselves and empath, but to remember, obey, bully and control. 4. Stigma toward mental health. -> Children drowning in guilt and shame created by manipulative and guilt tripping parents (and teachers). High suicide rate among teenagers. Video game addiction. Low emotional intelligence. 5. Gender inequality and son preference -> marginalized female children in both family and school (especially in rural area). 6. Conservative attitude toward sex and romance. -> Poor sex education. Fear and shame about relationship between peers. ‘Purity culture’. Stigma toward young women who had sex. Porn addiction. 7. Car oriented transport infrastructure and lack of safe public space. -> Higher obese rate and lower independence among children. As a Chinese in his 20s, these problems seem quite severe from where I am from, and sadly quite common among many Asian countries. I want my children to have a happier childhood than mine. There are some hopeful signs of improvement, like the education reform started a few years ago, which limits homework and bans for-profit tutoring on school subjects. But many of the root causes remain unnoticed and unaddressed. It would take improvement of parent’s living standard, changes in social construct and times to make a big difference in children’s happiness here.
"Hagelslag" is not bread with chocolate sprinkles. The chocolate sprinkles are the hagelslag. Even better than white bread with butter and hagelslag is brown bread with peanut butter ("pindakaas") and hagelslag. Growing up in the 70's my primary school was a ten minute walk away. After day one I walked there myself. I was lucky to have my secondary school in the same village. Many children cycle to the next village up the road every day. 20 minutes to half an hour is not unusual. Dutch kids do go to sports clubs, music lessons etc, but mostly they again cycle there themselves. I don't know that Dutch parents make a conscious decision to let their kids cycle at a young age to make them more independent when they're older. It's just the way we do things... I live in Ireland these days and two things amaze me about the school system here. The amount of homework children get at a young age, and the amount of holidays. They must be related. Apart from the odd bit of project work I don't remember homework in primary school. Kids here spend hours on homework every week from when they're six. We had fewer holidays than Irish kids (three months summer holidays? Madness!) but also had shorter days in school and less homework, which means more time for socialising and hobbies. The point about critical thinking and questioning is an interesting one. In Dutch work culture it's normal to question what you boss asks you to do if you think there's an easier/ better/ smarter way to do it, discuss pros and cons and then agree on the way forward. Many cycling advocates recommend copying "Dutch style cycle infrastructure" but I don't think there's a specific Dutch design that can be copied. The Dutch approach is to review and improve. It's why we're pretty good with engineering all-round. Anyway, tempted to move from Schwarzwald to Oranjewoud? ;-)
1) Omg, why did you open the Hagelslag box like that?! 2) Full-time is technically still considered 40 per week, the 29-hour workweek cited is the result of all that part-time work. Though 4x9(hours) is often considered full-time as well but that adds up to only 36 hours per week (over just 4 days of working). 3) Growing up in the Netherlands I never noticed how a focus on pedestrianism and bike infrastructure contributed to my freedom and independence. Even traveling abroad (in Europe) I'd notice streets were different but never considered how that difference affected the lives of children. Also, everything is just nearby in a small country where medium-density (row housing) is the norm.
I think that in the Netherlands, politics are not as divisive as in America. Left and right can talk to each other in peace, so it's fine at the dinner table.
I went on a similar family vacation with my German children to The Hague last summer. We almost considered moving there we enjoyed it so much. Do you have a link to the reports you used? I don’t see it in the notes. In the reports I find, Spain has dropped significantly and I would like to investigate as to why this is
In my experience, German fathers are incredibly involved. At our kita in Berlin, fathers do at least 50% of the pick-ups and drop-offs. Same with the playground numbers, especially in the afternoons
I grew up in Germany in the 1960s and 70s. In my family we also had meals together, but I used to sleep long, already as a child, so I did not come to breakfast, except on Easter Sunday. And during the week, Dad would start work early, so he was already out of the house when my brother and I had to get up. My Mum would have breakfast with both, my Dad and us children. Or at least she would sit down with us. On the weekend we always had lunch together and all week we always had dinner together. We did have Dad time in the evening. My Mum stayed at home to raise us kids (she did have small jobs in the morning while we were at school, but it was nothing like a career). But she loved to go out in the evening while our Dadloved to stay at home. So he stayed at home and was babysitting us while Mum went out in the evenings (not every eveingin of the week, but 2-3 times per week). While we still had corporal punishment at that time (not just our family, but most other families as well), my parents were using it less and less with time. And we were also included in most family decisions, e.g. my Dad and I downvoted my Mum about the name of my little brother. We were free-range kids. We walked or cycled to school from age 6, and we played outside without supervision until it became dark. My Mum usually knew where I was and called there when I was staying too late. I also grew up in a village and at the time, nearly everyone knew everyone else. So when I was playing in a different part of the village and was doing something wrong, I would get told off by the people there, and they would also report to my parents what I had done. So "it takes aa village to raise a child" was realality in my childhood. We also had fields and forrests around our village, where we went to play. We were all taught about the dangers of the roads and the forrestss, so we knew what we were allowed to do and what not (and we also knew, our parents would find out if we did something wrong). In secomnndary school (Gymnasium) I went to a very young and liberal school. It had just been build, and many of the teachers ver very young and still very idealistic. Sor having discussions about subjects, and hearing and responding to other opinions was part of their curriculum, and it very much taught me to form my own opinion. People on RUclips and in social media often talk about childhood trauma. I feel sorry for them, as my childhood was not very traumatic, even though I was always "different" and sometimes felt like an alien on this planet. And there were kids who made fun of me, but - other than my 2 best friends - I never cared about that and when somebody later told me, that was bullying, I did not perceive it as bullying. I had very early developed a resilience against what other people thought of me. And though there are afew things that hurt me, I didn't care about mostof what others said about me. And I was never traumatised by it. So all in all, I had a very happy childhood and think back to it fondly. And I miss my parents, who passed away in 2011 and 2015.
MLB has midweek games at 1pm and the stations are full, is it possible that wlb has changed since covid at least in the white collar segment? GDP per capita is the holy grail in the U.S. that makes rich people richer while more people stay poor.
![DDG & G Herbo - Nosey [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/I9Ra0Zc2NlQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Former Dutch kid here (45 yo 😅) and current teacher. For me growing up, the independence and trust I got made for a very happy childhood. From age 6, I was allowed to cycle to school independently. I remember vividly exploring the country side and the woods and making rafts from age 10-12. Age 15 I went abroad on holiday with a friend, taking public transport.
As a teacher at an international school, I see the Dutch students are great at self-expression, critical thinking, open-mindedness and being independent compared to other nationalities. Which definitely can be a pain in the butt as well - especially for my none-Dutch colleagues. 😋 Dutch kids are not afraid to share their opinions and will try to negotiate almost everything.
Yes, independence! That must be where that 'fearlessness' I admire comes from.
@@Syl-Vee Thanks! Where are you from, if I might ask?
in fact I guess this IS the basis for the imfamous Dutch Directness. Just telling it as it is or at least how you see it.
@@ewoutbuhler5217 Agreed!
I'm a teacher and when I get a new class at the beginning of the school year, I can instantly tell which kids had a good breakfast and cycled to school and which kids were shoved out of Mom's car with a bag of chips 5 minutes prior...
When we talk about school lunches here in Denmark, I always say I'd rather we focused on starting the day with a propper meal, in a calm and friendly atmosphere. Then they are "teachable" for at least the next three hours 🙄
If they haven't had a successful learning experience BEFORE lunch, we've lost them anyway...
@@ane-louisestampe7939 In The Netherlands you bring your own lunch. No school lunches.
@@daphnelovesL We do too, but every few years we take the debate 😉
@@daphnelovesL we do have school lunches just not everywhere !
I grew up in the 70s and 80s in Germany. I have loving parents, who had arguements and found solutions without getting loud or swearing. We had three meals a day together, when we grew older, school and work schedules reduced the number, but one meal a day spent together was always achieved somehow. Our parents were supportive, they told us their opinion, but often (if we could not get hurt or into serious trouble) they let us do what we wanted to do. If we failed, we never in our lives heard a "told you so", but they comforted and encouraged us. My sister and I are in our 50s now and yet, we see our parents several times a week, we support them with cleaning, grocery shopping and gardening, or driving them places. We love going on vacation with them or on day trips. We are so appreciative of our happy childhood, feeling safe and knowing that our parent will always be there and will always love us, no matter what - I get tears in my eyes when I think about it and I am thankful beyond words.
I tried to provide the same childhood for my son, but unfortunately, his father moved out when he was 4. And again, the family was there, supporting us, my father taking him to soccer practice, when my work schedule interfered, my mother watching him, so I could cure a bad cold, do housework or even just go grocery shopping by myself. My sister and brother-in-law taking him over night, so I could just get some rest. He'd come home from there or from my parents house full of happiness, stories of his adventures and sometimes a new book or toy that I could not afford to buy for him. Family is everything for me. And now that my son is grown and I found a new partner who is a widower and who makes me very happy, I am trying to give what I received at home to him and his young teenage daughter: a home, a family and happiness - I hope I succeed, because happiness and feeling safe is the most important thing for any child. For anyone, for that matter.
Great video!
You missed a few important things in your morning ritual and beyond (based om my upbringing).
1: You both didn't eat with the children.
2: You prepared the slice of bread in the kitchen, not at the table (it's important for the child to see the work as they want to emulate that).
3: You didn't cut the bread in small, eatable pieces (cutting it holding your fork in the left and knife in the right hand and no switcheroo), it's how they learn table manners.
4: I had a small set of knife (not sharp), spoon and fork (with a rabbit at the end). I used the fork to pick up a piece of bread and put it in my mouth (emulating my parents).
5: I wasn't the center of attention. When my parents spoke I had to wait and listen until they where done, after that I could talk and they listened. I was an integral part of the family and as important as anyone else at the table.
6: Not everything was a discussion. Rules where rules, sure I could vent my opinion but there was an end to it.
7: Freedom goes with trust and when I abused that trust my freedom was taken away, no discussions there either. I had to earn the right for the freedom back by being exemplary to win back their trust.
Bang on! Second this! 👍
It also surprised me to see the parents at the breakfast table without anything to eat, watching their children eat. I was born in 1965 in Germany and we always had all meals together at the dining table. It was even a bit too strict for me, like dinner was at 6 pm and no matter what I did at the time, I had to drop everything, say good bye to everyone, because it was dinner time. After my father retired and I became a teenager, my mother prepared breakfast for me in the evening so I could get it early in the morning, as they wanted to sleep longer. Which was perfectly fine for me, she still prepared it :)
I have to disagree with you.
A few things that come to my mind:
- You don't have to cut the bread into small pieces. The kids can either do that by themselves or just hold the slice in their hand and eat it bite by bite. At least once kids can really communicate it's best to let them do things by their own and just offer them help when needed. Of course anything that's being done for the first time or first couple of times is exempt from that as is anything where they can really hurt themselves. But if the worst they can do is just not get it done, let them try for themselves first and just say "Just tell me, when you need my help".
- Including kids in a discussion and valueing their opinion doesn't mean there are no hard rules. No riding a bicycle without a helmet. No playing with electricity. No crossing the street without me (or mom), etc. Also there are times when there is no hard rule but it's still not debatable what we do, for whatever reason. BUT: kids should always be allowed to ask why. When I say no it means no. But kids don't see the world the same way us adults do. They don't know that electricity is harmful. They don't know how much it hurts if you land head first on the street. In our house the rule is: when mom and/or dad say "Don't do this/that/whatever", then you don't do it - because we have good reasons to say so. But these reasons are no secret, so you can always ask "Why?"
I agree with points 1 and 2, but cutting bread into pieces with a knife and fork?? That's not how we eat bread in Europe. Cutting bread into bite-sized pieces is seen as a bad parenting habit, except if the children have problems with their teeth (like when their baby teeth are about to fall out, because chewing with wobbly teeth isn't fun).
And children shouldn't be considered more or less important than adults when it comes to dinner table conversations. Making children wait until the adults have had their say is just as weird as making the children the sole center of attention. Just treat everyone with respect and the children will learn to do so as well.
Good points! To be honest, a lot of your points are very fair. We mostly do eat breakfast with the kids but a lot of these rituals are adapted because we were not in our "normal house". For example, this morning we made coffee, but normally eat yogurt with the kids. But I might push back on is #3. My 3.5 year old would likely die if I cut up his bread. He LOVES bread and is very specific that he only eats it whole. Now other foods, sure he eats with a fork and knife just fine.
As a Dutchie myself, it is good to see these things through the eyes of an "outsider". I notice that I find most of the issues you bring up so normal that I don't even see them as anything special. Seeing it through your eyes makes me realise how good my partner, I and the children have it here. Thank you. Great video 👍
Did something change since 20 years? Those I knew where the most government screwed children I knew, who weren't free at all and their well-being came from traveling abroad to speak freely. Maybe it's relative.
I felt exactly the same at first. But then I remembered other countries don't have hageslag. You can never have happy children without hagelslag. It has to be the hagelslag.
@@foobar8894To which my Dutch husband replied, "Which explains why we aren't number one in physical health." LOL
@@foobar8894We may not have Hagelslag, but we share a 567 km long border with you, which is - thanks to the Schengen Agreement - only a line on a map which can easily be crossed to go shopping.
Greetings from Germany!
But, never let that stop you from making things even better.
I'm 63. I grew up in the sixties and seventees. As far as I can remember I could ask my parents really any question and get a real answer at a level suiting my age. They never told my I was too young to understand something or any other reply just to make my question go away. So at the age of 4 (it was somewhere in 1965) I saw Fidel Castro on the news. As a small child I didn't understand anything of what they were saying. So I asked my mother and she explained to me who Fidel Castro was and from what country he was the leader and that he wasn't a nice man.... Nowadays we have the 'Jeugdjournaal' a special newsbulletin on tv for kids from the age of 5 to around 12. They present important (also international) newsitems in a way younger kids can understand it. Don't be surprised if they are covering the 2024 presidential elections in the USA.
My primary school best friend's parents were communists, in the 80's. Party members who went to Romania on vacation every year and brought back the of course superior canned food I got to taste too. That's also part of it, my friends came from different religions than my parents, different class, different education background, different wealths, politcal convictions, ethnic backgrounds, so you had to adapt when the parents had called your parents that you stayed for dinner.
But what was always the same that the whole nuclear family ate togehter a the dinner table and it was normal to be asked about your opinion on a variety things by those parents too.
"Don't be surprised if they are covering the 2024 presidential elections in the USA."
The United States of America is the country where you have to get really really really old to become president, but it does not matter how smart you are.
Willing to bet that Dutch kids will have a better understanding of the election than the general U.S. population.
I'm really curious what Jeugdjournaal would have to say about the US election. I can't imagine trying to break down that insanity to kids.
I don’t know when I have seen comments so unrelated to the point of the video as these.
I was a happy Dutch kid 50 years ago and got my first bike when I was 4. 🎉
Just this week the company AFAS announced that they would close their offices on Fridays to give their employees the day off and do other things. They switched everyone to four day workweeks without adjusting their pay. People who already worked four days will get a raise to match their colleagues. They are really at the front on this topic realizing that their employees are more than just robots but people with lives outside the workplace.
I lived in the Czech republic until the age of 11 and was allowed a lot of freedom to roam and to be independent while feeling taken care of. It made me a very happy child. Then we immigrated to the US, and happiness became something I struggled to feel again for a very long time. There were some fleeting moments, and I tried to provide at least partially the type of childhood I had to my 2 daughters. I was very judged by other parents for my lack of helicopter parenting. After 30 years of life there, I finally decided to leave, and have found happiness again in Northern England ( of all places) with my husband and younger daughter along for the ride 😁
at my (German) house, we always had breakfast and dinner together as a family. My father travelled a lot for work, so he would often leave early or be away for days or weeks working in foreign countries, but for my mon, my brother and I, we always had meals together and my father would join us if he was at home, too (and that would usually be three meals a day as we had school off midday and there was no dayschool as we often have it today - plus, mom was not working a regular job but taught evening classes at adult school). I completely agree, a regular routine and having meals together is really important for a child’s development. When I was an AuPair in New Jersey in the late eighties, I was flabberghasted by them rarely having a meal together. I can pretty much count the times we sat down together at a table to be holidays and sometimes Sundays, but apart from that, the parents NEVER had a meal with their children. I, as their AuPair, was proving that type of routine to them, which was, to me, pretty sad and a COMPLETELY new concept. Both parents were lawyers, both working a commuter’s distance away and worked long hours, so often, they would leave before the children were even up and - if lucky, be home before they went to bed. I did not have children myself, but I would NEVER have raised my children that way…
and not to mention a MAJOR factor: No gun violence! Kids don't have to be worried for their lifes.
You have to realize it all depends on what school you go to and where you live. You go and look at statistics and most of the school shootings happen at public schools. In the US you have private and Charter Schools. Private schools you have to pay for. The majority of parents that send their kids to private school are extremely involved in their kids lives. Ypu go and look at statistics again and most parents of school shooters werent involved in their childrens lives (a lot of times it was a single mom trying to get by. One shooter wasnt this sterotype. His mom was very involved, but she died. He did the school shooting shortly after his mom died). The downside of private schools is it can be very very very expensive. There are also Charter schools. You don't have to pay to be in this kind of school, but they are extremely picky on the kids they take. Charter schools expect parents to be extremely involved. A lot of kids in Charter schools have both parents involved in their lives. My kids go to a German International Charter school in Florida (thank you, German government, for paying for my kids' schooling). The kids don't worry about that. It isn't difficult to shelter your kids from that kind of stuff. My kids don't know when a school shooting happens, when a mass shooting happens, when war is breaking out in other parts of the world, etc.
@@jessicaely2521
You do know it's a typical US problem
@@jessicaely2521 no offense, but ANY shooting even possible in a country is unacceptable. No matter wnere you go to school. That is just sick!
@@jessicaely2521 Good to know its is on public schools mainly.... What a relief.
Europe isn't crime free, but even "bad areas" in Europe don't have anywhere near the violent crime that the US has in many places. Kids are SO much less likely to by killed in Europe by violence
I’m Dutch myself and I believe that Dutch parents want their kids to develop into independent, self reliant people who will make their own choices, and not necessarily be successful in terms of earning a lot of money or be the best at something. We do encourage them to DO their best, but not at all cost. We ‘re used to saying: as long as they’re happy, it’s fine.
Hagelslag is one of many toppings for bread. a slice of kaas, Gouda, peanutbutter, jam, or meat. Dutch parents generally have the approach that you must taste something first before you say you don´t like it.
Or peanutbuttwr with hagelslag , or Nutella with Hagelslag. That is really lekker !
This video is very recognizable. I am a Dutchman 71 years old. My parents always had time for their children, even in difficult times. They are especially proud of what we are as people and of course what we have achieved in our lives, but that is secondary to work status. They found it always very important that we were happy and would remain so during our lives.
As someone who grew up in the Netherlands this was very interesting to watch. There's still so much room for improvement in Dutch society that I sometimes forget about the things we already do quite well. Dutch parents are often told about the '3 R's' for raising kids: rust, reinheid, regelmaat (rest, cleanliness/hygiene, regularity/routine). We almost always had breakfast and dinner together as a family, and it was not uncommon for us to discuss a variety of life topics during this time or catch up with each other as we ate together. I started cycling to school by myself at a pretty young age too, which was easy because the school was in the neighbourhood and it was easy to avoid busy roads. Self expression and developing your own opinions is strongly encouraged both in school and by society as a whole, though at the same time there is an expectation to 'act normal/reasonably' (doe normaal) and not stray too far from commonly accepted norms. Kids are given a very reasonable amount of freedom and responsibility and are therefore also held responsible for their own actions (to the degree you can expect from a child) which fosters independence and self-confidence. My parents didn't put pressure on me or my siblings to excel at school, instead they fostered an environment where we could live up to our own potential, whatever the 'level', and make sure to balance it out with plenty of rest and time for fun after school stuff. For example, my sister was on the boundary between two different school levels, and she could've done the higher level if she had dropped one of her hobbies, but my parents found it more important that she did something she enjoyed rather than pushing for 'better' school results at the cost of her happiness. She eventually ended up going to university and getting a master's degree anyway later on. It may not have been the fastest way to get there but she did it in a way that balanced her priorities and the pace that was suited for her at the time. Also just like in Germany, kids in the Netherlands are part of everyday life, they aren't segregated away from the rest of society, they are an active part of it. For example, there's no 'family restaurants', you just go to regular restaurants with your kids. Kids see a lot of adults around them all the time in all kinds of places and start emulating their behaviour, life itself is your best teacher.
Just booked flights and hotels to take my kids to the Netherlands last night! I'm British and their Mom is half Canadian, half Dutch. I'm excited for them to explore their heritage and see how different it is to their current home in Canada. I grew up in the UK and the best thing about my upbringing was 1) having parents that had strong Christian values (we went to church every Sunday), but without being too legalistic about it, 2) that my parents supported my musical and artistic endeavours, 3) that I could walk/cycle to school and 4) I could play out in the road with my neighbours unsupervised (we lived in a private cul de sac), 5) My parents took me to lots of different countries around Europe and I was able to explore the world and see how other people lived.
European kids learn freedom so much earlier than American kids. In the UIS, getting a car is seen as "freedom," but so many friends of mine had to work loads of hours to afford the car and the insurance so really it wasn't freedom at all. I grew up until Age 12 in the Netherlands until my dad took us "on assignment" to the US for a year. One thing lead to another and we ended up never moving back. I would still spend around 6 weeks each summer visiting Family in the Netherlands. It was completely normal for me at age 13 and my sister age 15 to get on a bus to get the Amsterdam central station, buy a special youth discount travel "day out." It would include return train fare, the activity at the far end, and additional bus transfer as needed. We took multiple day trips all over the country. In the US or Canada that would literally be illegal and considered child neglect. Instead we had fun day trips and explored areas or museums all over the country. By the time I was 16 and she was 18 (she was graduating), we spent a couple of weeks with family in NL and then spent a month using a Eurorail to go all over Europe. Munich, Innsbruck, Salzburg, Vienna, Rome, Florence, Strasbourg and back to NL. We had to pre register for all our youth hostels and had to use Travelers checks as this was 1986 and credit cards were rarely accepted. We had a calling card (that cost at least a dollar per minute to use) and would call back to our parents in the US when we'd checked in at the next youth hostel. I still have amazing memories from that trip nearly 40 years ago. THAT was freedom. Traveling as teens using trains and public transport was so much safer than US kids taking a car somewhere.
Speaking as a German, most of our cycling culture comes from the Netherlands, so I'm happy to see them get some credit for it for once. ;)
Really interesting video as always, and I love the fact that you mixed up the format a bit this time. I love your usual format, but this "holiday edition" is a nice change of pace.
Not only the biking culture, but also the bikes themselfs came from the Netherlands?
Do apologize this rather bad joke, it's from a time long gone. If I admire one people making peace, amends and learning from the dark pages of their history, it's the Germans. I love your country and people, everytime I visit I intend to come more often.
Eeey dankeschön!
You bring back my childhood memory's. My mother was Dutch, my father was Italian. I grow good with haghelsag.
Austrian millenial here. I loved my freedom to go anywhere by myself as a kid. My mum had an old car horn that she would honk if we had to come home. So as long as i stayed close enough to hear it i could go anywhere in the neighbourhood, woods and fields. Also i valued eating dinner (Abendbrot) together a lot. I would still come home for dinner as a teen and after that meet up with friends again.
I do concur with another commenter here, I was rather taken aback when you spoke of the family breakfasting together but you and your husband had only coffee …
Now I understand that some people don’t like food in the morning (I myself didn’t eat in the mornings for most of my adult life), so I would suggest lunches and dinners together - because sharing food does bond.
I think it’s something deeply archaic within humans, sharing food gives us a good, safe feeling.
As a child & teenager we always sat at one table, eating breakfast, lunch and dinner together. My mother was a stay at home mom until I was around 14, my dad had a 90 minute lunch break (quite common back then), and came home for lunch every working day.
(Of course “lunch” was our main meal of the day, a hot meal, and “dinner” was the usual bread, butter and cheese or sliced luncheon meats as toppings for the bread.
And I wrote my bike to secondary school from the suburb to the town center, since I was about 10 years old. Before that, to grammar school, I walked or took the bus. Of course by myself.
After homework was done, we played outside most of the time (cowboys and Indians was a favorite), we climbed trees, went sledding in the winter in little groups, we had to be home before 6 PM for dinnertime (when it got dark in the winter), and in summer we were often allowed to spend a bit more time outside after dinner.
Of course, in secondary school there was still lot of learning to do after dinner, but by then we had mostly grown beyond cowboys and Indians …
Our granddaughter in Switzerland just turned 4, she’s still accompanied by one or 2 parents to preschool and the big playground a bit further away, but in mid August she’ll start Kindergarten which (in the Kanton Zurich and some other Swiss Kantonen) is part of the regular school system and therefore mandatory, and we expect that she’ll walk by herself soon.
And yes, they eat their 3 meals together resp 1 parent with her, as the parents are working shifts.
Independence at an early age is encouraged.
Exactly the same here. We could have been neighbors :)
When I was a school kid in the 70ies in Germany my dad worked mostly evenings and Saturdays, and my mother was a stay-at-home mom (partly due to her bad mental health being bipolar). So I remember clearly having breakfast together with both of my parents. Lunch on schooldays was from secondary school on eating alone (my parents had already had their lunch before dad left for work) but my mother sat with me and we talked about school, homework, and what I wanted to do in the afternoon. Dinner was mostly my mom and me, but when dad was home it was the three of us together.
With my family (my kids are in their mid-twenties but still living with me) we did the same. Having all meals together if possible and keeping the kids company when they were late because of school. When my husband passed I adapted my cooking to when the kids returned from school.
I rode my bicycle everywhere and independently from the age of 7. I didn't ride my bike to school because primary school was a literal 5-minute walk and secondary school was in the city center and we lived in the suburbs about 10km/6m away with lots of traffic and few bike lanes on the commute. But when in 8th grade my friends from the same suburb started to ride their bikes to school (at least in the summer from April to October) I followed suit, In winter it was still more convenient to use public transport.
We now live even further away from the city and public transport is the better option for my kids to get to university and the company/trade school respectively than biking.
All in all, I was a happy child and young adult. Unfortunately, my mother passed when I was 20, and my father and I got estranged after that and he was out of the picture for the rest of his life.
My kids were not so lucky as my husband fell very ill when they were just 7 years old and had to watch him dwindle away until he passed when they were 14. Combine this with undiagnosed (till age 13) autism in one and just shy of diagnosing autistic traits in the other, they both haven't fully recovered but they are on a good trajectory because of the social safety net (Schulbegleitung - a person who was at my autistic son's side in school, after-school care, group therapy for one [all paid by the state or our heath care provider], big brothers big sisters for the other one [charity], and my in-laws helping out all the way).
: That was a truely great video. Being German myself I always find it fascinating how our Dutch neighbours do things differently from us but to great success. I didn't know parenting was also a part of it. To be fair I've have similar experiences growing up, what with the everybody at the dinner table and such, but there are key differences when it comes to sharing the family work-life balance that I find quite convincing, is better handled on the dutch side of the border. It's a great country and I absolutely adore their approach to bicycling! They seem to have build their social foundation to be very stable which is something I'm missing in Germany. Especially with the modern trend to "overthrow" anything traditional, but maybe that's just my bubble.
For me the most important part for my happiness as a child was something you touched upon. Don't know the exact words, but you said something like the child is a person by itself. Something I've always had a problem with is parents who treat their children as just something else they own, or even worse a second chance for themselves to reach their goals in life through their children. Yes, raising children in a way where children are allowed to form and express their opinions can seem more tiresome, but it is so much more satisfying and prepares them for the life they will have to live by themselves at some point. I'm not sure we'll be able to preserve these ways here in the Netherlands, as influences from other countries/cultures influence us as well, but I sure do hope so.
Hope you had a great time during your life "Beneath the Waves" experience.
"They aren't big on cars", now personally... that is correct. However, the Dutch are just as much into cars as other people. We just think there is a time and place for anything. The place for cars is on dedicated roads outside of the city center. We do actually have one of the best, if not the best driveable country for cars. (there are sources, probably things like WEF and such)
How about Not Just Bikes?
My multinational family sat together at meals and I listened to the adults (not the kids) discuss work, news and world events, even music, religion and politics. They had lively discussions and I learned to be curious and open minded. I love the Netherlands! Over the years, I have found my Dutch friends to be fearless, honest, down to earth and fun. They have no problem saying what they think. Oh yeah chocolate sprinkles and vanilla fla were some of my favourite taste discoveries. It seems to me Americans prefer to experience life through the intermediation of screens. Let's hear it for Daddy Days ! Thanks for another great video topic. Happiness as a means to success. What a concept.
I've been getting my Sunday headbanging 🤘😆🤘 in during this video as I was constantly nodding my head to your experiences, arguments, and expressions. Couldn't agree more.
My dad often worked four days of the week at his office more than 200 km away. So I only saw him on Fridays and the weekend. During the week my mom and I ate breakfast together after which we practiced our synchronous clearing the table and loading the dishwasher ritual. To this day, more than 40 years later, my mother and I still can harmoniously do this ritual.
My 8 and 9 year older siblings had left the house when I went to middle school so I became in essence a lone child at home for the week. From Fridays to Sundays we grew from a two person family to five people. However, as usual, late teens, or rather young adults often have conflicting schedules with their parents so it often went that we didn't eat breakfast together. But lunch and dinner was often eaten together as a family.
My husband and I grew up in religious authoritarian families (in the US), and vowed to do differently for our our kids. We chose a path very much like the "negotiation parenting" you talked about, and while it was indeed hard work, our teenagers are pretty great. I wish we could have given them more independence as they grew, especially biking, but our town infrastructure is quite biking- and walking-hostile, so they're only now getting into biking as teens.
It annoys me when people act like the US obsession with children's sports is such a mystery. The motivation is extremely obvious. If a child becomes a sports star, they can get a university scholarship that will save many tens of thousands of dollars of future expenses.
Edit: same with grades. I would have been way more relaxed about my GPA if I knew my university would be free regardless.
Dutchie here 🙋🏼♂️. As a father of three mini humans (aged 4, 3 and 1) I constantly have an open dialogue with my kids. I set boundaries, but they’re free to question these boundaries. When one of my kids asks me “why?” I set a specific boundary, instead of telling them “because I say so”, I tell them my motivation behind it and I give them the opportunity to have their say about it. It is up to me whether or not I love the boundary. But even if I don’t deviate from my boundaries, I still made them feel heard and understood. In return they learned that I had a pure intention instead of just being dominant and strict.
My kids are well behaved little humans, but they aren’t submissive. They listen to me, because they know my intentions are good. And sometimes they don’t listen to me, because they’re kids and that’s just what they do.
I try to be a positive father, although I too sometimes don’t feel like taking the time and effort to do it it this way. But in the end, this positive way of parenting is the shortest and most effective way of parenting, although it is quite exhausting and difficult.
About the grit and determination: there’s a saying here that goes like “je bent toch niet van suiker gemaakt”, which translates to “you’re not made of sugar”. Rain won’t kill you, falling with your bicycle won’t kill you, you just have to keep going on and eventually you’ll get the hang of it. We don’t kidproof the heck out of everything either. Of course we make sure they won’t get electrocuted, but we’re not overprotective. By letting kids discover things themselves (and occasionally fall or hurt themselves) they’ll develop their ability to judge a situation and their own behavior. Let kids be kids. They’ll learn quicker and better than we can teach them.
I don’t have a “papadag”, but I squeeze my fulltime job in 4,5 days, so I can have the Friday afternoon with my eldest kid (she’s out of school at noon). I’ll make her a tosti or I’ll make her an omelet and just spend the afternoon with her (only her, instead of also her two brothers whom are at the daycare). When my two other kids will go to school I’ll do the same with them.
My wife works three days a week, so she is with the kids two days a week. I think this is quite a good balance.
At least two of the days I work from home, so I can bring my kids to school/daycare and pick them up early and cook dinner so my wife doesn’t have to.
It looks like you are a good father! Really awesome!
I am Dutch 60 years old. My parents were pre WW2. In some ways they were very strict. Obedience, decent haircut and good clothing/shoes and always be spot on time for all three meals for example. So no, not a negotiated upbringing here ! But, in some ways they were very lenient. I could as a 6 year old play outside, unsupervised, until the streetlights went on. At 12, I could cycle to a friend, and listen to music, play chess and have deep discussions until the sun came up. Provided, I did not get into trouble and did not oversleep and finished school with a diploma AND my parents knew where I was. If there was a change of plan for the evening/night, I had to call them not to ask permission, but to notify them. I kept all my parts of the bargain too. I even finished university. I was diagnosed with Aspergers at 50. So, my youth was not easy and I wanted to be alone in the woods lots of the time. I am still grateful that my parents gave me that space, without even knowing that something was "wrong". I never felt really at home, ended up divorced, but with a very job, a nice son and a stable personality. My world is in my head and it is balanced thanks to the "Dutch" upbringing style. As my parents were dead before I discovered this, I could never thank them for that. I did not fit them at all, but I am still grateful for their hard work with me.
I'm Dutch and grew up in a little village. I cycled alone to school when I was 6 or so. I remember mostly just playing with a lot of kids after school. My village was like an extention of my home. Yes I also had music lessons and sports, but that was not a central part of my upbringing. I never really considered how lucky I was to be able to learn at my own pace and not be in a rat-race with fellow students. My parents always said to me: even if you want to sell sausages on the street, as long as your happy, we are happy. And by the way, I have a very good job now. Because I liked what I was doing!
Another superb sequel of "Ashton Analytics" or why raising a child in a for-profit environment does not make too much gainz for their overall happiness.
In our family table top games, playing cards, board games etc have always been a very important family value that promotes a lot of very useful skills.
Perhaps because I didn't have a TV the first 9 years of my life, and observing my elders reading or having fun with card and board games with friends and neighbours, socializing this way after a main meal led me to feel at peace at home which also leads me to feel happy whenever such an occasion arises even nowadays, where making friends is a bit more difficult. Watching TV together was a "thing to do" in my teenage and young adult years. I still prefer this to watching alone as an adult.
Not being able to go to school felt like punishment to me as a child. Sounds so strange to some, doesn't it?
In my Dutch side of the family it was indeed important to have everyone at the table for most meals, and yes, aside from being encouraged to try new foods (at least one taste) every possible topic was discussed and we learned not to interrupt unless there was something important.
@@conniebruckner8190 Yep, that's aside from the no TV until age 9, also mostly been my experience.
I'm not convinced that a slice of (European) bread with butter and a teaspoon of chocolate
is more unhealthy than a bowl of US sugar pops cereal and long life milk - with added sugar.
Yeah, they are straight putting cookies in a box and calling cereal now.
Haha, excellent point!
As a child I definitely loved my chocolate sprinkles (on whole wheat European bread though, I never really liked white bread), but it was only one of the options. We always set the table with all bread topping options present. So I could choose what I felt like eating that day. Like cheese, meat, peanut butter or jam. It's one of the smal things in which I felt taken seriously as a kid. As soon as I was old enough to point at/articulate what I wanted, my parents let me decide for myself what I had om my bread.
In general, American cereals already contain far more sugar than cereals in Europe. If you compare the content information on the packaging, you can see that the sugar content in the USA is far too high.
Kids aren't eating that anymore unless it's a treat. They eat cereals with no sugar or 2 g of sugar. Milk isn't bad for you. Milk has 3 grams of sugar if organic. Kids don't take an entire serving size of milk for their cereal. They take 1/4 of the serving.
See-food-diet 😍 LOVE this concept. 😅♥️
Former Dutch kid and current Dutch parent here. I had a lot of autonomy when growing up and my kids (4 and 6) get the same now. On Wednesday and Friday they are done with school at 12:30. While we have lunch, we talk about the activities we'll be doing in the afternoon. I usually have a list of chores to do, which they are welcome to help with. But it's not an obligation. Sometimes they go outside to play with friends at the playground nearby. Sometimes they go to their rooms to colour or will do something else in the house
Sometimes one or both decide to help me, so I'm done with my chores sooner and we can do something together, like play a game or go a bit further than the playground (they're not allowed to go further by themselves, not because I don't trust them but because 4 years old is too young to venture into more car infested places without supervision and I don't want to put that responsibility on my 6 year old). Sometimes they play outside for so long that I don't see them until 4 (except at 15:00, because they know there'll be a small container of fruit waiting for them at home, which they can eat at home or take with them to the playground). And on those days, I get to kivk back with a book between the chores and dinner. It's great for all of us. An I've never understood how north American parents get anything done.
Good morning Ashton, any regrets about not moving to the Netherlands yet 😂
So nice of you to devote part of your vacation to making a video on our society and culture! There is lots to critice too though. Specially in your field of study.
Did you have any frustrations or negative insights on your stay?
I hope you will make a follow up video on the Netherlands for sure!
yeah like what about the racism. raising white kids doesn't seem that difficult to me anywhere. heard france was the best in europe because they have the least mandatory schools, but then again with the overall rise of fascism, i kind of doubt that europe is a good place for kids in the nearer future. except maybe in some tucked away corner without a lot of connection to the world...
@@sujammaz
Lebanon.
Look at what happend there,in the past.
So if we would like to become an Lebanon 2.0,we need to listen to all that silly racism crab.
Also,i can,t name any religion our race,who did nothing wrong in there own past.
Yes yours and mine to.
Thats why we Germanics hate hypocrisy.
Not only breakfast also diner we have as family together. We always have a lot of discussions during dinner. And drinking coffee together at 8 pm, with the news, biking to school, not for a special pedagogical reason. But because everyone did that. And still does. (Btw, this is the origin of the cycling infrastructure outside cities, it was always there. For all the kids that cycled to school).
15:31 Well, I also don't want to shade on *my* German friends who have kids, but … to be honest, after watching these issues for more than a decade, actually, I kind of do.
We have a huge equality issue in Germany between men and women, that we ignore, because we usually don't talk about money. But not only we have a terrible gender pay gap, but we also do have a tax system, that really incentivizes married couples with a bigger income disparity for the partner that earns less, often not to work. And when raising kids, that very, very often means that mothers stay at home much longer and doing the care work.
I remember very well, when the young, conservative secretary for families (from 2009 to 2013), Kristina Schröder, spoke about the 'freedom of choice' that parents should have, when deciding how care work would be split between both parents. However, this financial legal framework would in many cases instead lead to the man, who in many cases just earns more than the women, would only take an absolut minimum of 'Elternzeit' (parental leave).
Conservatives in Germany until today fail to recognize, that for many couples there is no real 'freedom of choice', but also, for many men in Germany, there is not much reason to argue with their bosses about the financial inequality that is still a realilty in this country. And this is, where German men as a group, don't meet what can and should be expected.
The parenting makes the children think and rethink their choices. What went wrong and why. So would you do it again.
That comes back when they are older. If you want a Dutch person to do something for you, than make sure they can see the benefit. If they do not, it will become a struggle to get it done. It is always: give me a good reason, than I will do it happily.
So when kids are given choices on whatever, they will learn that some choices they have made, didn’t work out so well. And they probably do not want to take that route again.
Another good video with some good perspectives and lessons for parents, no matter the country. As an American, I have serious doubts if we can ever achieve this great work/life balance and not view anything involving our children as a competition.
As our productivity is median, per capita, it is one of the highest per working hour. Because we work only 29 hours a week. And I notice it in my own work environment. I’m often the only one at the office on Friday, because all part timers have Friday off, lots work from home on Friday, others work on a regional office near their home and there are always people having a day off or on holiday. I am one of the full timers with a 40 hour workweek, but with 49 vacation days in total, so in reality my workweek is just above 32 hours.
I'm age 59 and when I was a child my dad worked in construction and was from home during week days, sleeping in barracks on the construction site. Later he moved back to the coal mining industry and worked afternoon shifts only. So I didn't really see my dad during the week. In the weekends he was very busy with the vegetable and fruit garden and small farm animals, leaving only part of the Sunday free. That time would be spent watching sports on television. This means that my entire raising up was managed by my mom, who didn't have a job outdoors.
That was how things were in the past, and means that I did have a much stronger bond with my mom as with dad. So I think it's a good thing that the daddies of today are allowed as much time with the children as mom, and that despite the dads working more full hours than the moms.
Also, 4x9 hour working weeks aren't still the standard, often the 36 hours are planned differently and even 38 or 40 hour contracts do still exist in certain branches.
A really neat video of you. A certain TED presentation talked about the freedom kids have when playing outside. Parents are not overprotecting, leaving room for exploration.
It is great to see how our neighbors do better. Especially the smaller countries around Germany have splendid ideas which we could adapt
Yes, we (speaking from the Netherlands) may have splendid ideas. Just don't overlook the good sides of Germany! The great thing is, that we all can discuss each other's ideas and maybe implement the "best practices". Besides, together we constitute some "what if" laboratory.
If you should wonder about the good in Germany, just watch the documentaries on the regional broadcasts. RUclips recommendations keep me orbiting NDR, but at least SWF and BR do feature these too. :-)
4:21 *NHOOO* Don't open the entire top. You'll spill all the delicious _hagelslag_ if someone tips the box over. Open the spout on the side. Look for a small triangle or rectangle shape on one of the narrow sides of the box. Pull it out, but do *not* tear it off. Now you can close it when done sprinkling.
12:37 I usually didn't bother with rain clothes. The commute from school - to home was a bike ride of twenty minutes at most. From home to school was a completely different story, because mom believed you could get the sniffles in the rain and made me put on all the rain-repelling gear.
I believe the shortening work weeks started to free up some space on the labour market, to combat general employment back then but also to get some flow, dynamic in it. But the effect on work life balance was embraced and it's actually mostly about not excluding the part timers/4 days a week workers from having a career.
But it's all connected. It's work/life balance and not necessarily work/rest balance. Those sport clubs the children go to have to be run by volunteers. The Dutch do more volunteering than any other people, whether it's charities or sports clubs, and you might have to chip in, do a bar shift at your kid's football club or referee a game. That wouldn't work with American unpaid displays of loyalty to the company by putting in more hours.
So happy you enjoy your time in the Netherlands. I went 10 years ago for a relative wedding. I have not see them in while. I hope to see them soon. The Netherlands has a way of life increase children happiness.
Hi Ashton, I recognised the location and holiday apartment right away. I live (and have lived all my life) in the neighbouring village and spend my whole childhood most weekends on the same lake as my parents owned a sailboat (where we could sleep as well) and a peace of land at that lake. It was only a bike ride away. I hope you enjoyed your stay. In the summertime it’s even nicer to come over, as you can swim and recreate on the lake and canals. If you were there earlier this year, the water temperature was probably too low, although we used to go swimming as of the Pentecost weekend. Have a nice day!
Great vid as always, this one hit me deep, because I tried myself as a father of two, to first have a focus on letting my kids be as happy as posible, then on them being "succesful" according to society scales.
22:36 What I appreciate about my upbringing (in Northern Germany) is, that I was respected and valued with my talents and faults. And I was not pressed to do sth 'because it is done like that', but the situation was taken into account and I could choose if it was reasonable enough.
Support/motivation/consultation to find my path were given, but the choice was mine.
Dear Ashton, congrats for another excellent work. I lived and went to school in Holand, from my 8 to 10 years old, than, came back to Brazil. Uau, what a shock it was!
An important thing you missed in this video is about freedom dutch children have.
Not being watched and monitored 24h.
Playing outside with friends without supervision or from a distance.
Going to activities without parents being there all the time.
Be at home at dinner time.
Or before it gets dark is a rule that many children have a ably to.
The rule most Dutch children know is that it's time to go home when the street lighting turns on.
But even when they ignore that, most children will get hungry around their normal dinner time and head home anyway.
Great video. Yes hagelslag is part of happy kids. Give a woman chocolates and she becomes happy 😉 Something in chocolate sprinkles makes people happy. Brings back my childhood of hagelslag. It was hagelslag, cheese and peanut butter
For me in the States it was all about sports. I played all of them and usually at least one parent was always at my games/matches
We spent a lot of time figuring out where to live, and the final contenders were Freiburg and the Randstad (the Randstad one but Freiburg is still a great place!) Glad you were able to enjoy the Netherlands!
To your question - weirdly enough my favourite part of my childhood in a California farm town was biking everywhere. It was different in the early 90's....
Ashton, nice video with a lot of recognizable aspects of Dutch life.
On the style of parenting and discussing with your kids, it's part of Dutch decision making in public government... it's called "Polderen" derived from our "National" landscape consisting of polders (reclaimed land surrounded by dikes) and the way they usually came to be.. In that form of decision making it was required that everybody who had a stake in the process also had a say, thus preferring everybody's involvement and a high degree of consensus. And that's something you've got to learn from an early age.
In Education attention to more relational issues is tought, depending on age. So learning to respect the other's boundaries also in the sexual realm and accepting the sexuality of others. Being a fully functional and social person is important, also because of the high density of people per square kilometer in this Country.
About the Hagelslag breakfast.... well I know that characterization and it's not quite representative of the average Dutch breakfast. When bread makes a big part of breakfast, usually Hagelslag is on the table along with other usually sweet stuff. But granola and products like that are also common.
I'm a Gen-X-er from Canada, so of course my upbringing was very different from the way kids have been brought up for the past 20 or 30 years. We were very independent. For example, to get to school, you either waited for the school bus yourself, or you walked to school or rode your bike without parents. And I'm talking about 5 and 6 years olds. When I was 10, my 8-year-old sister and I would walk my 3-year-old sister to Montessori school, that was in a church hall about halfway the way to our school. Our school was about 3/4 of a km or 1/2 a mile from home. Any kid in my school would have been mortified to have their parents accompany them to or from school, or wait with them at the bus stop.
What was fun, is that on the way home or to school, you would meet up with friends. So I would leave home with my 2 sisters, but by the time we got to school, 3, 4 friends would have joined the group.
Tested and proven, family time results in stronger bonds and emotionally stable kids.
A few years ago I read the book "The Year of Living Danishly." Really kind of fun and incredibly eye-opening as an American. Sort of depressing (because our culture is so _not_ egalitarian).
My upbringing in Germany wasn't much different and I am still looking back to a great childhood, even though I didn't have parents. I would not want to miss it for the world.
I remember once, being 10-11 years old and we were in the forest at an old castle. We managed to get into what once was the holding cells for prisoners. We got in, but not out as it was to deep. We jelled for a while till some hikers came by and got us out of the misery;-)
In todays world, this would be like absolut horrible. Parents didn't look after the kids, kids did things they are not allowed too and so much more. In the US, this would even make national news.
Looking at my grand kids in the US, I can just cry every day on what a horrible life they have and that the US as a whole does not see what horrible environment we created for them. They are brainwashed and just do what others tell them, not thinking for a second if it is wrong or right. I tried to fix that, but the overall system and how things are is just to strong for me to push against.
It all depends when you were brought up in the US. 2000's is when kids were limited on what they could do alone. My brother and I have done far far far worse things than getting stuck in an old prison. This is tame. The worst thing my brother and I did was when I was 7 and he was 10. We took the powder from firecrackers and place it into a plastic bottle. We would stop when we had 6 grams of flash powder (yes Florida kids used grams). When we got our amount we would put a fuse in the water bottle, light it, and run like hell. We left a few holes in our backyard and killed a few birds. We told our mom "I don't know how the holes or dead birds got there." Our mom was shopping while we did this. We would also take dry ice break some off with an ice pick, place in Gatorade bottle, put cap on, shake like crazy, and throw. It would explode. It really wasn't dangerous unless you touched the dry ice or had shards of plastic hit you. My brother and I spent a good chunk of our freetime with explosives. Police would drive by and see us playing with explosives and we only got "be careful with the explosives. You can seriously hurt yourself or others." Police knew we were under 18 (in Florida you have to be 18 to use fireworks or explosives). Nowadays kids would be taken away from parents if kids were caught playing with fireworks or explosives alone.
Nice to see family pictures again. Great video. Important topic.
socialization is SO SO SO important!!! everytime i hear an american parent talking about how they do or might homeschool their kids, i automatically cringe inside. all i hear is "my kids will probably only really socialize with US. at home. and they will probably be really lost when it comes to human interaction with people who arent the ones they spend all their time with already." idk im just so glad that youre not allowed to do that in germany.
😅😅😅😅😅😅😅😅. You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Homeschooled kids have socialization. They have neighborhood kids, team sports, homeschooled kids do field trips with other homeschooled kids, there's summer camp, girl scouts, boy scouts, and even homeschool parents that invite other homeschool kids to their house and do some schooling together. Studies have shown that homeschooled kids are better with socializing than mainstream kids. I was home schooled and I always had some kid to play with that wasn't my brother. I went on field trips, did group projects with other homeschooled kids, and I was in the Girl Scouts, and I was on the swim team.
@@jessicaely2521 the problem with all that is just thats its not in any way monitored by a government body. so as a homeschooled kid, you just have to be lucky that your parents care even a little bit about exposing you to different people. also, its still not the same. there are a lot of different developmental things that happen in a school that just dont happen in summer camp or boyscouts or group sport. also lol please show me that study lmao
@jannecapelle_art 😂😂😂😂 again you're running you're mouth without knowing what the laws are. Most states do monitor homeschooling. There's only 9 out of 50 states that dont care. Kids have to take tests at the end of every year to make sure they are onpar with kids from mainstream schools. Also parents HAVE TO keep a portfolio of what their kid did in the year. The government looks it over. Majority of states you have to cover reading, math, spelling, grammar, and citizenship. In Florida you have to give yhe government paperwork for intent of homeschooling, you have to turn in a portfolio with what you did, and your kid has to be tested at the end of the year.
@@jannecapelle_artThomas Edison, Alexander Grahm Bell, Wright Brothers, Serena Willams, Venus Willams, President Thomas Jefferson, Susan B Anthony, Florence Nightingale, Albert Einstein, etc were all homeschooled. Studies have proved that most homeschooled children are smarter than mainstream school children.
@@jannecapelle_artNational Home Education Research Institute has proven home-educated typically score 15 to 25 percentile points above public-school students on standardized academic achievement tests. Public schools, private schools, and charter schools have a lot of children (20-30). There's no individualized attention on things you don't understand. There's individualized attention when you are homeschooled. The reason I was homeschooled is because I wasn't doing well in mainstream schools. Kids would always interrupt class, teachers didn't have time to help me on a individual basis, and some teachers just didn't know how to teach a child with learning disabilities. I went from getting C's and D's in school to getting A's. The reason is my mom and dad knew how to teach my learning style. I took the way my parents taught me and applied it to University. If my parents didn't teach me I wouldn't have been a physical therapist because I wouldn't be able to get through the work because I didn't know how to teach myself and how to study.
I grew up in South Africa. My parents were always proud of what I did. ( I grew up without tv. because when I was a child South Africa did not have tv. there my family left 1975 and came back to Germany .That was such a social shock for me. So have a nice week greetings 😊😊
I grew up in the US eighties, in a single parent household. I would say I had a much happier, healthy upbringing than kids get here today. We could walk to school on our own, we often ate meals together and had discussions about news, politics, etc. I played little league, but also went to the roller rink on Wednesday evenings, parents dropped off/picked up, but they didn’t stick around to monitor us. Kids got together on their own in the evenings to play. School was just school, I didn’t earn college credits, I didn’t feel pressure to perform. And I didn’t do shooter drills. I’m curious what the cell phones and social media rules are in the Netherlands. It seems pretty toxic here for kids.
Amen. 80's to mid eaely 2000's were fantastic as a kid. Every evening we played street hockey in the street. I still can hear us kids yelling car. All clear. I loved going out on our (I had an older brother) little rubber boat and picking up neighbor kids during the summer. We would be gone for 12 hours doing all kid stuff. We would ride our bikes everywhere unsupervised. On our 26 ft sailboat our dad would give my brother and I 20ft of rope each and say "have fun." There was no social media bullying, no school shootings, no worries in general.
I don't know where the study at 4:00 comes from, but it is definately not Nordic, as they have switched the Swedish and Danish flags. Congrats on another interesting video I didn't know I would need (from Denmark)
Saturday was candy day "Karkkipäivä" for us (also the day we went shopping every week as a family) so me and brother always got the choice of 200g of candy or 2€
As a small child I wanted the candy, but I lost my sweet tooth in my early teens so I started taking the money instead. It made me happy and proud of myself that I only ate candy if someone offered it to me
I have two kids. And when they had to choose what school is next at about 11/12 yo. There is the school with a advise about the level. Of course there is your own thoughts about it. But in the end we have let the kids make the decision. I knew my daughter could do a higher level but knew too, that she would not be happy. So why should i push here somewhere and make an unhappy kid? Important was that she could explain why. For my son it was the same. Talk with your kids with argumentation. And respect the wishes. And on a certain moment put your proud a side and be happy.
Welcome to my country and thank you for all the positive words. Funny, I never thought about any of the things you talked about. But I suppose the vast majority is also what I experienced. My grandmother even told me: happiness is the most important thing in live (and love). To enjoy the small things. And yes, we tend to have fairly strong opinions that we like to share. I just never realised that these things were so specifically Dutch really.. I AM really happy my parents only required me to do sports. I could choose WHAT KIND, but we had to exercise.
I think the part time working part is changing. More towards the US system. Work more, less vacation, higher workloads, etc... Germany seems to do better there I guess...
Congrats Ashton, excellent job as always, all the best from Croatia..
I don't have kids but that it had to be stated explicitly that children are primarily their own little person, not a reflection of their parents feels eerie/ uncanny
En dan gaan we vanmiddag met voetbal nog winnen ook !! 😂
Haha!
As per usual a well informed and very well made video. ❤
I did not hear what I think is far more important than breakfast together or the other topics mentioned: appropriate parenting. Self control and self reliance are the most important skills to teach for the child experience happiness and success.
I mention this from the perspective of a marriage to a "permissive parent" - someone who felt that making children happy in the moment by giving them what they want in the moment was a priority, walk away or ignore any misbehavior, treat discipline from the other parent as a misfortune to be countered with a treat, never require responsibility or give consequences. Children in this environment were perpetually unhappy, and when isolated from that parent (due to a vacation trip without her), became happier when rules and consequences were spelled out and responsibility for action demanded.
One of the best lead into a sponsor ad. The product is related to the RUclips video. Good job.
The focus on learning to think and be independent, or at least, to be able to give your input, gives children the basis to be able to decide what they really want to do, in all aspects of their lives. And to choose something that really fits them, and not just the expectations of society.
To be clear, it's not as if The Netherlands is somehow a paradise. There are definitely people who parent differently, people who are "helicopter parents", or "tiger parents", or "curling parents", there are people who value the type of school, diploma, who push their kids to do 20 activities, hobbies, and sports, but this is mainly about general trends.
Kids who learn that they are trusted to make decisions at a young age, learn to trust their own judgement or find out why their choice was not the best one with low stakes. It might by uncomfortable to wear that fluffy unicorn onesie when playing in the sun, but the child will find out fast why their parents told them it might be too hot to wear that onesie. So they learn that sometimes there is a better choice, and what the consequences are if they choose something that's not the best option. And the very low stakes mean that a child doesn't suffer from learning that lesson. Being hot for a little while is uncomfy, but it's not dangerous. Making a bad decision for bigger issues when you're older tends to come with bigger and worse consequences. So children learn the results of their choices impact them, they learn that sometimes they should listen to advice, and they learn to incorporate what they learn later on. Children learn how to weigh the options, they learn compromising, "I love my unicorn onesie, but I also want to play outside in the sun, so maybe the onesie is better for inside when I'm sitting down".
And it's also not as if parents just push their kids onto a bike and say "go to school!", they start by going with their child, and then by giving the child the illusion of independence (same with the onesie example, oh, it's too hot for your onesie? Good thing I brought a t shirt!) by cycling a bit behind their child to keep an eye on things for a while. So the child feels independent, but there is that safety net of their parent if something happens.
When you learn how to make up your mind and how to decide for yourself very young, you will be able to do so much easier when you're older. It's a skill, and if you develop it early you'll reap the benefits later. This also helps with teens being reckless and thoughtless, it's not that Dutch teens are somehow not going through puberty, or make bad decisions when they're teens, but at that point they've been learning how to make choices, and what the consequences of their choices are, and typically they get the information they need to make such decisions, so they are more likely to be able to decide what they want to do, rather than following the peer pressure. Of course, there is still peer pressure, people are people still, but having the skills to navigate that makes it much easier for teens.
The negotiation and decision making at a young age also helps with showing kids that they are trusted. This means that kids are honest about what's going on in their lives, and this also means that parents can guide their kids. If a child feels like their parents will always choose for them, and will not listen to their opinion, they are more likely to just do what they want without any input from their parents, and keep their lives a secret. A child keeping some small secrets from their parents is normal, and more privacy as children age is normal, but it's not normal to keep big events a secret, and can be very dangerous, and can mean that a child feels they cannot tell their parents about things that should never be secrets.
Being trusted also builds confidence, trust in their own skills to make choices and their skills to navigate difficult situations.
And something that is sort of a side effect, but also very important, a child who is able to say what they want and who has learned that their parents will allow them to choose when possible, will be less likely to stay quiet when they encounter abuse of any kind. If a child has learned that they are allowed to say what they want, they are more able to spot someone who wants to bulldoze over their boundaries, and they are more able to defend those boundaries. Both as a child, as well as an adult. This is the ideal situation, and it's not that all children learn to be confident etc, and abuse still happens, sadly, but giving children the skills to keep themselves safe helps a lot.
Helemaal met jou eens 👍🏼
Gday Ashton, thank you for your surprising video. Well done Netherlands for leading the way in this statistic. However I don’t have any complaints about my childhood and my grandchildren also seem to be living their best lives. I feel the elements that support childhood happiness are feeling safe and loved in the family unit, access to a good education , exercise and nutrition, access to good health facilities and living in a safe and cohesive community/ country.
I'll never get how you get weird looks for chocolate sprinkles, but in the next second those people take a bite from their bowl of cereal that contains even more sugar.
It doesn't necessarily have sugar or its extremely low. My kids have cereal and the only sugar that's in it is milk sugar. There's cereal that kids enjoy that has no sugar. Cheerios has 2 grams of sugar. Chocolate sprinkles has more than that. The sprinkles I have has 8 g of sugar.
Hagelslag is unhealthy. It makes it even unhealthier when eating 'witbrood'.
I was born in the early 60s. When you mentioned all of the activities that American kids are involved in, it made me think of how different that was to my experience. I mean, sure, we did have Little League and scouting. But there was also a lot of unstructured activity. Here I'm thinking of sports. In the summer (and actually during the school year as well) it was quite common for a bunch of my friends to head down to the local park to see if we could get a pickup baseball game going. That seems incredibly rare these days. When the organized portion of the baseball season is done, those local baseball diamonds are completely empty. It's sort of sad.
I Iive in Berlin I see many Men with the children. I am a nurse and I absolutly cant work in home Office.
Or less hours .
Yes you are so right social happyness are soo important it bringst you much further many greetings from Christiane.😊😊
Hagelslag, peanut butter, marmalade, nutella, speculaas ( a ginger cookie) on bread, cheese of course etc. But not on white bread.
Children already cycle to school from year 7 if the child is ready for it. They play outside unattended from year 5-7 depending on the child.
Overall wonderful but I do have to push back on one point you made. I think it's inaccurate to say that the Dutch aren't big on cars. Apparently the Netherlands is also the best place in the world to be a driver. And one of the reasons it's so great is that they don't make everyone do it for every trip.
Love your RUclips content. Funny thing is You have these steps in the videos that feel like that the video is ending while in reality it just halfway..
White bread was not a part of our breakfast. Volkorenbrood with choclatepast not Nutella or sprinkles but allso peanutbutter an appelstroop or jam. For lunch we ate volkorenbrood with cheese and boterhamworst.
I won't argue that Dutch kids are the happiest. Not just that, but the most confident. Like everyone I've seen those videos of schoolchildren cycling to school on their own - well, with loads of other school kids. Not a parent on the 'school run' in sight.
But does that make them happy adults? I've visited many times. I like the Dutch. They seem much the same as us Brits. But what has happened to their politics? Never mind all the extremist parties, they have a political party for everyone, whether you are a leftist, rightist, commie, fascist, Catholic, Protestant, farmer, townie.
It is weird to me that you talk about having breakfast together, while we see all you have is a coffee. The sharing of food is a bonding experience that goes back thousands of years. It shows trust, if anything. And trust means a better bonding and being at ease. It is nice knowing the person you seat with in your cave is not going to kill you. And it sets examples. So eat while the kids eat. It does not matter if it takes more time. It is time you spend together.
One of the best memories of me as a kid was the time together at the table. Just talking and sitting there. And obviously eating together at the same time. This also translates to eating out. It is the social part that is way more important than the food. For kids it teaches social skills. And we had dinner at 18:00. The fact that cell phones did not exist, or that I had no watch was no excuse of being late. So it taught being responsible and when being late, it taught that there are consequences for actions.
Eating together is so bonding that the thing you are most likely to do with a potential life partner is eat together. A date often is similar as the first time going to a restaurant together. And the first time you cook for a partner is a huge step. The fact that it was burned does not matter. The fact that you shared food is the important part.
So even if not possible during the week, do it during holidays and weekends.
An interesting difference between Dutch and American parenting is shown in the book 'Not under my Roof' by Amy Schalet. It describes the ways Dutch and American parents are dealing with first relations and sexual experiences of their adolescent children.
Breakfast together is normal in the netherlands but the children dont eat each day the same. Mostly they choose self en the parent stimulatie to choose to choose different breakfasts
Well done| Again 😀 👍👍👍
(No comments. other then: keep up the good work)
In many ways, unhappy children are just the symptom of unhealthy society.
1. High inequality, low social mobility. Low salary, poor working condition and low social respect for vocational workers. Narrow definition of successes. These lead to unreasonably high academic pressure in school and out-of-control private tutoring during weekends and nights, which results in high myopia rate among children and not enough sleeping time.
2. Overly long working hours, no subsidized childcare. ->High workload for parents. Children have little time to spend with their parents.
3. Authoritarian government and social structure. -> Critical thinking and social skills inadequate among children. Children are taught not to question, analyze, express themselves and empath, but to remember, obey, bully and control.
4. Stigma toward mental health. -> Children drowning in guilt and shame created by manipulative and guilt tripping parents (and teachers). High suicide rate among teenagers. Video game addiction. Low emotional intelligence.
5. Gender inequality and son preference -> marginalized female children in both family and school (especially in rural area).
6. Conservative attitude toward sex and romance. -> Poor sex education. Fear and shame about relationship between peers. ‘Purity culture’. Stigma toward young women who had sex. Porn addiction.
7. Car oriented transport infrastructure and lack of safe public space. -> Higher obese rate and lower independence among children.
As a Chinese in his 20s, these problems seem quite severe from where I am from, and sadly quite common among many Asian countries. I want my children to have a happier childhood than mine.
There are some hopeful signs of improvement, like the education reform started a few years ago, which limits homework and bans for-profit tutoring on school subjects. But many of the root causes remain unnoticed and unaddressed. It would take improvement of parent’s living standard, changes in social construct and times to make a big difference in children’s happiness here.
I really liked the thumbnail for some reason hahahah! Just letting you know 😊
"Hagelslag" is not bread with chocolate sprinkles. The chocolate sprinkles are the hagelslag. Even better than white bread with butter and hagelslag is brown bread with peanut butter ("pindakaas") and hagelslag.
Growing up in the 70's my primary school was a ten minute walk away. After day one I walked there myself. I was lucky to have my secondary school in the same village. Many children cycle to the next village up the road every day. 20 minutes to half an hour is not unusual. Dutch kids do go to sports clubs, music lessons etc, but mostly they again cycle there themselves.
I don't know that Dutch parents make a conscious decision to let their kids cycle at a young age to make them more independent when they're older. It's just the way we do things...
I live in Ireland these days and two things amaze me about the school system here. The amount of homework children get at a young age, and the amount of holidays. They must be related. Apart from the odd bit of project work I don't remember homework in primary school. Kids here spend hours on homework every week from when they're six. We had fewer holidays than Irish kids (three months summer holidays? Madness!) but also had shorter days in school and less homework, which means more time for socialising and hobbies.
The point about critical thinking and questioning is an interesting one. In Dutch work culture it's normal to question what you boss asks you to do if you think there's an easier/ better/ smarter way to do it, discuss pros and cons and then agree on the way forward. Many cycling advocates recommend copying "Dutch style cycle infrastructure" but I don't think there's a specific Dutch design that can be copied. The Dutch approach is to review and improve. It's why we're pretty good with engineering all-round.
Anyway, tempted to move from Schwarzwald to Oranjewoud? ;-)
1) Omg, why did you open the Hagelslag box like that?!
2) Full-time is technically still considered 40 per week, the 29-hour workweek cited is the result of all that part-time work. Though 4x9(hours) is often considered full-time as well but that adds up to only 36 hours per week (over just 4 days of working).
3) Growing up in the Netherlands I never noticed how a focus on pedestrianism and bike infrastructure contributed to my freedom and independence. Even traveling abroad (in Europe) I'd notice streets were different but never considered how that difference affected the lives of children. Also, everything is just nearby in a small country where medium-density (row housing) is the norm.
I think that in the Netherlands, politics are not as divisive as in America. Left and right can talk to each other in peace, so it's fine at the dinner table.
Funny, German clubs are almost non-profit.
Oh... Hagelschlag ... memories come back!
I went on a similar family vacation with my German children to The Hague last summer. We almost considered moving there we enjoyed it so much.
Do you have a link to the reports you used? I don’t see it in the notes. In the reports I find, Spain has dropped significantly and I would like to investigate as to why this is
In my experience, German fathers are incredibly involved. At our kita in Berlin, fathers do at least 50% of the pick-ups and drop-offs. Same with the playground numbers, especially in the afternoons
On what you say about American education at 9:32 , it should make people wonder about US 'land of the free'.
I grew up in Germany in the 1960s and 70s. In my family we also had meals together, but I used to sleep long, already as a child, so I did not come to breakfast, except on Easter Sunday. And during the week, Dad would start work early, so he was already out of the house when my brother and I had to get up. My Mum would have breakfast with both, my Dad and us children. Or at least she would sit down with us. On the weekend we always had lunch together and all week we always had dinner together.
We did have Dad time in the evening. My Mum stayed at home to raise us kids (she did have small jobs in the morning while we were at school, but it was nothing like a career). But she loved to go out in the evening while our Dadloved to stay at home. So he stayed at home and was babysitting us while Mum went out in the evenings (not every eveingin of the week, but 2-3 times per week).
While we still had corporal punishment at that time (not just our family, but most other families as well), my parents were using it less and less with time. And we were also included in most family decisions, e.g. my Dad and I downvoted my Mum about the name of my little brother.
We were free-range kids. We walked or cycled to school from age 6, and we played outside without supervision until it became dark. My Mum usually knew where I was and called there when I was staying too late. I also grew up in a village and at the time, nearly everyone knew everyone else. So when I was playing in a different part of the village and was doing something wrong, I would get told off by the people there, and they would also report to my parents what I had done. So "it takes aa village to raise a child" was realality in my childhood. We also had fields and forrests around our village, where we went to play. We were all taught about the dangers of the roads and the forrestss, so we knew what we were allowed to do and what not (and we also knew, our parents would find out if we did something wrong).
In secomnndary school (Gymnasium) I went to a very young and liberal school. It had just been build, and many of the teachers ver very young and still very idealistic. Sor having discussions about subjects, and hearing and responding to other opinions was part of their curriculum, and it very much taught me to form my own opinion.
People on RUclips and in social media often talk about childhood trauma. I feel sorry for them, as my childhood was not very traumatic, even though I was always "different" and sometimes felt like an alien on this planet. And there were kids who made fun of me, but - other than my 2 best friends - I never cared about that and when somebody later told me, that was bullying, I did not perceive it as bullying. I had very early developed a resilience against what other people thought of me. And though there are afew things that hurt me, I didn't care about mostof what others said about me. And I was never traumatised by it.
So all in all, I had a very happy childhood and think back to it fondly. And I miss my parents, who passed away in 2011 and 2015.
MLB has midweek games at 1pm and the stations are full, is it possible that wlb has changed since covid at least in the white collar segment? GDP per capita is the holy grail in the U.S. that makes rich people richer while more people stay poor.