I was thinking about that when I was dropping my 6 year old off at some hobbies earlier - it’s pretty much expected to have learned how to ride a bicycle before starting school, and it massively expands the area you can go to by yourself. When she went to school by bicycle she can easily make a detour via a shop to spend some pocket money before coming home, while by foot that’d be rather time consuming.
Quite a lot of friends from outside of Europe either can’t ride a bicycle, or were learning it as adult after moving here, though.
edit: the high number of replies mentioning “swimming” made me realize that I had that filed as a basic skill pretty much everybody has - probably due to swimming lessons being a mandatory part of school education here.
Poor kid. Couldn’t afford lessons. Revel in your privilege! :-D
I understand that in America, at least, there are certain elements that kept certain people from being able to learn to swim. To me, it wasn’t lessons. I was just around water? Maybe I was too young to remember any formality to me, I was around water, so I learned to swim.