Weird things German relatives do while lifting their kids

March 21, 2017

For full disclosure, we spent my initial year in Germany as an au span for a poetic German family in Berlin, so we mostly acted as a fly on a wall watching several German parents.

And while we could commend many of their methods from my possess American upbringing, there were certain rituals that gave me a bit of enlightenment shock.

1. The immeasurable volume of bizarre contraptions to ride small ones

Photo: DPA

Germans positively can get artistic when it comes to gripping their youngsters in tow. The precarious-looking buggies they have strapped to a front or behind of their bikes still give me stress as we watch relatives speed along bustling city streets.

These certainly contingency be reserve risks? But alas we doubt military keep annals of Fahrradanhänger-related injuries, so we can't yield an answer.

2. Letting them play outward in freezing, awful weather

Perhaps this is usually a clarity of someone who grew adult in warmer climates, though saying German kids clambering around on playgrounds amid subzero temperatures and utterance winds was utterly a startle to me.

But relatives here reside by a German saying: Es gibt kein schlechtes Wetter, es gibt nur falsche Kleidung – There’s no such thing as bad weather, usually bad clothing.

3. Impractical sleet suits

Photo: DPA.

But notwithstanding what a Germans contend about bad clothing, they apparently haven’t nonetheless satisfied how awful and unreal those darling one-piece snowsuits are. The aim demographic for this mantle – toddlers – are a misfortune choice for doing a elemental restraints since they simply haven’t nonetheless mastered bladder control. And still, come winter, this outfit is entire around schools and parks.

As shortly as we hear that small unfortunate defence of ich disorder pullern – we have to pee – we know it’s already a competition to find a loo, and afterwards we also have to unzip a snowsuit and take out a child’s arms before they can finally soothe themselves. Spoiler alert: that snowsuit mostly loses in a finish and has to make a outing into a washer.

4. School ‘bags’ for their initial day

Kids carrying their “school bags” in Dresden. Photo: DPA.

Honestly, I’m a bit some-more sceptical of this protocol than confused by it. Going off to that initial day of Grundschule (primary school) is a most bigger understanding in Germany than we remember it being for me in a US, and it’s tradition to give kids a Schultüte – propagandize bag – to celebrate.

But a treacherous thing about this “bag” is that it’s not indeed any arrange of bag or trek as a name suggests, though rather a charming cone filled with candy and goodies.

5. Reading them really aroused stories

Stories from a classical book Struwwelpeter. Photo: Peter/Flickr Creative Commons.

The initial time we review a strange German Brothers’ Grimm stories to a children we was babysitting, we found myself perplexing to bury a content. Especially when a kids asked me to interpret a stories into English, we wondered either that also should meant translating them by my American sensibilities.

From Hansel and Gretel being undisguised deserted by their relatives – rather than simply mislaid in a woods – to Snow White’s disagreeable black being forced to dance herself to death, we struggled with reading these unfortunate tales to such susceptible immature minds.

And another German classic, Der Struwwelpeter, is no better. In it, one lady incidentally lights herself on glow and browns to death, a child has his thumbs cut off with scissors, and another child starves himself to death.

I’ll take a happy Disney endings instead, appreciate you.

6. Eating lunch accurately during noon

I suspect this one is usually about Germans holding their tenure for lunch literally – Mittagessen literally means “noon meal”. At slightest it gives children some clarity of a structured slight during a day.

Of course, removing kids to indeed lay down right during noon is another story.

But a robe even seems to hang for adults, as we might notice with your German co-workers.

7. Not training them to review until age six

At slightest in a schools we attended in a US, it seemed there was a large pull to get kids reading before age 5 and kindergarten.

But in Germany reading seems to be saved for when they initial enter Grundschule at age six, with Kitas and Kindergartens clever not to concentration too most on academics before then.

Still, removing a after start doesn’t seem to be carrying a disastrous impact: The latest PISA propagandize opening news tangible Germany as carrying a partially high share of “top performers” in reading, with scores above both a UK and US.

8. Letting kids play nearby or with fireworks

Okay so this small one is still too immature for even Germans to entrust with these fireworks, though a fact that this print exists says something. Photo: DPA.

One of my closest German friend’s favourite childhood memories is environment off fireworks on New Year’s Eve. And now that she lives in a US where purchasing these bomb inclination is some-more limiting in certain regions, she’s generally vehement to lapse to Germany to watch things explode.

I was taken aback here how accidentally these pyrotechnics are sole in contentment during supermarkets. And Germany even has a special sequence of lower-risk fireworks for kids that can be purchased over a age of 12.

But maybe a fact that Germans are gentle with this – and not adequate fingers go blank around a holidays for them to wish to change things – reveals some-more about American parenting habits: we’re a bit too cautious.

So maybe it’s improved to mount behind a bit, let them launch explosives into a frozen atmosphere while wearing their snowsuits, and trust that kids have a small some-more intrinsic common clarity than we give them credit for.

Article source: https://www.thelocal.de/20170320/weird-things-german-parents-do-raising-their-kids