Mildly Interesting

I have to assume that it's not just the avondvierdaagse, but more so the mentality here that kids can roam freely and play without their parents having to protect them at every moment. Something they do name in the article very briefly.

Kids here have a lot of autonomy, something that they don't appear to have in the US for instance. I'm Dutch and when I was young I'd just roam the neighborhood with friends. I didn't have a phone or tracker or anything, I was just somewhere relatively close to home, playing with other kids. Maybe at the playground of the school, maybe at the playground across the school, maybe cycling through the neighborhood like a menace on the public roads. We were obviously taught not to go with strangers and to be careful, this is not a mystery place without bad people, but that seemed to be enough.

Seeing images of the car-centric wastelands that are the average North American cities, reading about teens who still have to be driven everywhere anytime they wanna leave the house, I can totally imagine why kids would be happier here. We'd cycle to school ourselves before the end of primary school. I live close by a school now and there are plenty of kids who still do the same.