American parents can be quite overprotective, but Dutch parents are on the other side of the spectrum from what I can tell!

When I look around me here in the Netherlands, I see Dutch parents and kids just doing the same things. They go hiking, camping, skiing and biking from a really young age! It's not that American kids don't do these things—from what I gather, American parents just let their kids do that at a later age than Dutch parents.

Until your teenage years, kids in the United States can be quite protected. For good reason too because the Netherlands is a safer country on the whole. It must be why Dutch parents seem lax about other things like taking young children on race bikes for a biking holiday!

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