As a Dutch person I’ve never ever heard of this...I was reading this on my way to work this morning only to get back this evening with many Dutch twitter users saying the same. The only woods in Holland have some squirrels and rabbits, if one can find a square mile of woods at all... If only! I would have never left!
29
I do not recognise the Dutch at all in this story. I’m dutch and lived in The Netherlands my whole life. This story makes it seem that we are completely crazy. Children are never dropped in the woods without guidance of an aldult of at least 18 years old and it has nothing to do with parenting and teaching children to cope with theirselves. And I have had many droppings in my life. It’s Just a fun game during a holiday camp same like telling scary stories sitting by the campfire
18
Interesting how NYT is fascinated by us Dutchies. It happens to be that kids in the Netherlands belong to the happiest creatures on earth. According to a Unicef study on kids well-being the Dutch rank #1 and USA resides at the bottom of the list. Makes you think huh?
Enjoying droppings in the night, hagelslag for breakfast, and niksen with Dad on his 'Pappadag', is not so bad a way to grow up after all..
16
C’mon, seventy years ago - when I was 10 years old - we were ‘dropped’ in the woods near Cape Town to see if we could survive a night out AND find our way back to school. Did I? What do you think?
7
This is probably why I sent my young boys off to Europe and had them find their way on their own, without consciously knowing of the term Dropping. This was done to the great consternation of my American born wife - and to my guilty joy!
2
I applaud this tradition. I am glad that they are making it safer. I hope it is nothing like the U.S. boy scouts with the scandals they have had.
As a American Boy Scout I spent plenty of time in the woods. I hid in the woods throughout an entire week of boy scout camp in Missouri back in the mid-80s.
The older boys decided to haze us all but could not catch me. I was about 11 or 12 and way too wary. I was then betrayed when the "adult" - must have been about 19 - told me that I would be okay and then participated in pushing my head into the latrine.
At this point I left the camp completely and slept in the woods for the remaining nights. Returning for meals. I never went to scout camp again.
I was still in the scouts though and a year later my scout troop was playing a called "steal the bacon" you had to grab a pair of socks before the other person touched you. It was impossible. No one did it. I did it! But it was so awkward to maneuver that I slipped on the concrete and snapped my arm. Let me repeat: we were playing this game on concrete. That's nuts.
I eventually quit the boy scouts.
7
Sounds like the Knotts Scary Farm except way more wholesome and also cheaper!!
4
On reading this story I was reminded that I participated in a “drop” in the Netherlands in 1966 when I was there under the auspices of the Experiment in International Living. Our group of 10 Americans were a bit older than the Dutch children in the story; from ages 16-18. We had lived with Dutch families for a month, and spent the next two weeks traveling with our Dutch “siblings”, and two adult leaders.
We spent a few days in a Dutch summer camp with other kids, and experienced our “drop” on a rainy night, where we were taken to the woods, scared and blindfolded, given a few spare snacks and a compass. No GPS in those days. Our small group never found our way back to the campsite, but we did follow a railroad track to the town of Apeldoorn, where we arrived at dawn, exhausted and pretty miserable. We were retrieved from the town and brought back to the camp. In retrospect, the experience was exhilarating, and gave our group of kids a feeling of accomplishment and bonding. And we learned the valuable lesson that other cultures may do things differently from our culture, and that’s just fine.
13
An interesting way of doing things, but not one I would recommend to be used here unless you first teach the kids basic bush survival skills, and that is best done in an organisation like the Scouts. The Australian Bush is far too dangerous for this sort of practice, and I speak as one who grew up camping with my family, and not neccessarily in camping grounds either. We get stories of people, including at times pretty experienced bush walkers, getting lost and needing to be rescued.
10
I lived in the Netherlands as an adult and got lost in the woods at night with our group. None of us had GPS at the time, and we wandered around for a couple hours -- covering the same ground more than once. Had not heard of dropping, but certainly got a taste of what it's like that night. Good thing Dutch "forests" are not too big.
10
For American parents: send your kids to the Netherlands/Belgium for this experience:
1. There is no way kids can get lost in the woods: within 20-40 minutes walking you will hit a road/house/church (a “Dutch wood” is like a “USA bunch of trees”)
2. There is no dangerous wildlife in the woods, chosen for these ‘droppings’ (the most dangerous animal in the Netherlands is a boar, but these woods will be avoided, there are no bears or other ‘heavy’ threats)
3. There are no dangerous gun owners, as the Netherlands have fierce gun control laws.
4. Droppings are alway supervised by visual or non visual adults, who know the wood and the way out (sounds like an escape room). And again, just walk 20-40 minutes ahead and you will reach a road/house/city
5. Kids will have an amazing time: of course, they will be scared a little bit, but it’s amazing to see how kids will start to cooperate to solve the situation and how leadership evolves. And they will get out proud and have life lesson: “don’t panic, just solve the situation”
6. Being dropped blindfolded in any major US City is most certainly more dangerously.
GREAT STORY IN THE NYT, thanks for bringing back great memories.
49
Meanwhile, children in the United States can't even walk to school alone, and often there are laws about letting children of a certain age even be alone in their own home, much less dropped off in a forest.
26
This sounds like a hazing ritual that would result in the fraternity being dissolved. Parents blindfold their children on the way to leaving them off in the woods in the dead of night? And they are as young as 12?
My children are grown with children of their own and the term “helicopter parenting “ did not exist, but this practice seems a bit extreme. There are myriad ways of encouraging independence in children that would be more rational. What would city dwellers do? Blindfold their kids and drop them off in Central Park in the dead of night and wish them luck?
I can not imagine that all Dutch children enjoy this “rite of passage” challenge. It proves nothing other than navigational skills. It makes more sense to teach children to be responsible, emotionally regulated and kind to all living things. I can not see this practice catching on in America. And that is for the best.
6
To be honest, there’s is not much danger by ‘droppings in Dutch woods”. It’s like the Dutch mountains, they are not really woods, compared to real woods, NL woods are just a bunch of trees (there are no mountains in the Netherlands either btw). Walk 20-40 mins straight ahead and you will hit a road/house/town. I had many of those dropping and i have extreme good memories. It teaches cooperation, leadership and most of all not to panic, but to find a solution. Yes, a bit scary for kids (and me at the time), but in the end it was a LOT of fun. There is no dangerous wildlife in those woods, there are no crazy gun owners around (heavy Dutch gun control laws) and these droppings are supervised by visual and non-visual adult, who know the way out. It’s actually a kind of ‘escape room’ but then real life. Great childhood experience, it teaches a kid that he/she can cope with challenges, so it’s propably more scary to parents. Oh, being dropped at certain area’s in US cities is FAR more dangerously. (For the record, the Netherlands do not have ‘no-go zones’, if you ever visit the Netherlands, I can take you to any spot without any danger, even droppings :)).
14
The fact is that "where you stand depends on where you sit." As i alluded to elsewhere in the comments, I was raised in virtually unfettered and unsupervised outdoor time in rural New England through the 1950s and as a teen in the early 60s. It was a wonderful childhood though marred by ongoing sexual abuse out in the woods by a neighbor, from ages 4 to 8 - something my parents went to their graves not knowing about. I was sure that, as my abuser told me, I'd really get a beating from my parents if I told. At that age it never occurred to me that the opposite would happen (though I do think, unfortunately, that as good Roman Catholics of first generation immigrant stock they would have always had an underlying feeling that I was somewhat damaged and liable to being 'oversexed', and that in addition to my father destroying this guy's life, they would have also punished me).
So as to the Dutch tradition - it sounds pretty safe overall and the kids must love it. But I don't regret having supervised my own kids first hand, or under very reliable supervision, like a hawk til "double digits" while raising them in NYC in the 80s -90s.
5
Droppings are so exciting and so much fun. And they are completely safe as Dutch woods are very small with no wild animals. You always operate in groups and you always receive an "emergency envelope" with important information how to get in touch if your group cannot find the way back. Returning to the campsite finally makes you feel so proud.
12
I was never "dropped," but had a penchant for getting lost in Central Park! And I would always find my way back to wherever we were picnicking. When my mother and I would enter a department store, I would take off for the toy department, only to find her at some point once I was done with my adventure. And in my pre-teen years, I would go for long walks in Western Queens. No helicoptering. I like to think those early adventures play a role in my navigation abilities. It seems that our youngsters miss out on these skills, as well as adventures!
10
@Native New Yorker You got lost in Central Park? Really?
1
Lyme disease, poison ivy, West Nile virus, stranger danger....stop this madness;)
5
As a Dutch- American, I sent my son winter camping in the mountains of Vermont with a Burlington Boy Scout troop. Even with lousy equipment, he absolutely loved it. Now, reading this, I see it’s in the DNA!
13
Ellen Barry didn't do her homework very well. Dropping are not just for the kids of Scouting, Droppings are organized for children of ten to 16 years old, at school and sportcamps as well. And it's not as dramatic as Ellen describes, her article sounds more of a 'Five-O' episode, and trust me, it is not.
No Scott Caan or Alex O'Loughlin in our 'woods'. (If only...)
First of all:
You Americans have to understand that our woods are as tiny as our country (and that's tiny).
Seriously.
We have no bears, no snakes, and certainly no lone wolfs with guns and/or AK-47's running around looking for attentions by massacre (because: law)
Second of all;
There's no second, that's actualy it.
Our kids are fine and safe, you don't have to worry about them. ;)
26
I am Dutch and I was "dropped" several times. It was fun and exciting. You must know that the Netherlands are an extremely safe country. It wasn't until my mid-twenties that I visited the US and learnt about "no-go-areas". Of course I wanted to see them and I was almost instantly threatened by a weirdo. May I give you Americans one advice? Get rid of all those guns.
44
I guess Dutch nature can’t be compared with the wildlive or rough terrain in other countries. I live near Austerlitz; when dropped in the middle of the forest there you will hit a main road or train track in about four kilometres in each direction. That makes the activity pretty safe from a parenting perspective but doesnt diminish the experience for the kids! I hold fond memories of a schoolcamp dropping: holding hands with the girl I was secretly in love with under the disguise of keeping her from stumbling in the dark.
20
This is not only happening in Holland. As a Belgian scout we were dropped in the Ardennes and had to make it back to camp with a map and compass. I thought this is a basic scouting skill. Not sure why it's newsworthy...
13
Was never in the scouts, but as a child, I wandered around field and forest near home all summer long. No organized sports for me. No adult supervision either.
7
I had four annual dropping with the scouts. Magic : I was looking forward to the event with a mixture of fear and readiness to accepting the challenge . I had to overcome my own fear, and we had to perform as a group, motivating the more reluctant members. Interesting social and intense experience. We're still friends 50 years later.
A benign ritual , be it a bit scary for a young teen. Socially accepted and supported, a normalcy in Belgium. A badge of honor for the pre teen.
16
This Dutch approach to parenting is actually
much closer to the parenting dtyle of my own parents as they raised me and my four siblings in the '50s, '60s and early '70s. There is a lot to be said for encouraging kids to try solve their own problems.
24
I am Dutch and droppings have nothing to do with parenting or telling your kids to be independent. Its Just a fun vacation camp tradition same as telling scary stories at the camp fire.
3
Something similar occurs where I live, but what helps make it work are 1. no bears, and 2. no guns
13
BRB off to joing my ancestors in Gelderland, the Netherlands. Hopefully after "a dropping" they'll welcome be back as one of their own. At least Stijn!!
2
Now I love the Dutch even more, but would rather crazy people were not alerted that children will be in the woods in the dark by themselves.
2
Sure, you may have experienced a ‘dropping’ if you are Dutch, German, Belgian… and were part of the scouts or went to summer camp. To claim it’s a Dutch ‘rite of passage’ that every adult remembers fondly is quite funny. Scouting traditions are by no means mainstream in the Netherlands today.
9
@Rachel
I think at least two out of every three Dutch children do one or more droppings during childhood. In my experience as a father of three, you would have to try hard to avoid the experience.
My daughter did one in the snow, quite recently. She thought it was awful, but secretly also very cool.
7
Exposing your children to the present US president is far more dangerous for their development than participating in a 'dropping' in The Netherlands.
30
Agreed!
4
USA: We have contrived to elect the most vulgar and corrupt leader of any major democratic nation.
UK: Hold my beer...
7
My mother made us stay out of the house all day in summer. We rode our bikes all over the place. Twice I was hit by a car (at age 10, and again at age 14). This was before bike helmets, too. My parents never seemed concerned. They had three children, so if something happened to one of us, they had two more.
10
I something similar Boy Scout Summer Camp in upstate NY back in the 70's but we were not with other people, You were alone, and had to spend the night in the woods. Started at like 2 in the afternoon and finished the next afternoon. You had to build a shelter to sleep in. You were given a knife, some freeze dried food, canteen of water and a flint and steel to make a fire. It was more of a wilderness survival as opposed to a dropping but the results were largely the same
6
I think I'd rather do the Dutch version because in addition to survival skills you have to also work as a team; quite valuable a lesson.
1
Dear NYT, it's not just a tradition in the Netherlands but in Flanders and other parts of Europe as well. I was dropped several times and it was before gps and cellular phones , if we were lucky we had a compass and/or a map. The stronger characters help the other ones, you learn to depend on each other and to endure minor mishaps. Friendships are forged on those droppings, I wished more young people could get this experience. By over protecting our children we rase them to be nurtured all there lives in stead of taking initiative to solve the problems at hand. Another tradition is surviving for 24 hours without money and food and being dropped far away from your campsite, you just try to find people who will help you and in return you do some chores for them. I have the best memories from these experiences.
10
As a school camp counselor in Michigan in 1964, I experienced something very similar every week, except that it took place during daylight hours and involved map reading and a compass (no GPS then). We were dropped off from a bus in small groups of children plus one counselor, all blindfolded. It was a great deal of fun... the kids loved it and so did I, not much more than a child myself at 19.
4
In Belgium this is also a normal activity on scouting (girl scouts and boy scouts) activities. I have very nice memories about the day and night droppings I experienced. We were not accompagnied by adults, which gave us a great feeling of responsability and teamwork. We, as young girls, had to take care of each other and learn to comfort every one in the group (mostly about 5 girls). The best memories I keep of the 24 -hours dropping where you had to find a place to sleep, mostly in a barn. My both children have the same experiences, both for,many years member of the scouts and it was the same as in my time. No trauma, but fun. No anxiety but teamwork, new experiences, responsabilities. Mostly only the (very rare) accidents come into the news. Just as car driving: you don’t find stories about the nice roadtrip or the calm drive home, but only about the spectacular accidents. Still people just go on car driving....
9
@Pascale Franck: I guess it's more common in Belgium than in The Netherlands...
I wrote a comment pointing out that the phenomenon mentioned isn't exactly "typical Dutch" and that the article is seriously lacking basic understanding on European diversity in culture and habits.
I blamed the author for her lack of effort to research the scouting phenomenon in other European countries (basically: her lack of effort to review a few websites...). If she would have done that, she would have found hat those "night droppings" are common, in pretty much the entire EU.
That one is "awaiting approval", probably indefinitly.
3
Nature "intends" parents to teach survival skills to their offspring, and I raised my children that way. Imagine my dismay when my firstborn, a psychiatrist, and her husband help their bright children at the simplest tasks even without being asked. Just yesterday, the 11-year-old was taking more than a second to open my pool fence gate (which he has used on many previous visits) and his father goes out offering to help him. I rarely give advice to adult children but could not resist saying, "Why not give him a chance to figure it out himself? That fosters self-confidence."
5
I kind of lament what the modern world has become. beginning at age 9, in 1959, every Saturday morning I wake up at 500. AM, pack a lunch (usually a can of posk and beans), grab a handful of change, and but fishing gear. I'd find the freshly delivered milk and skim the fat of the top of two bottles (infuriuating mom), find my bike, and head over to Bobby's house by 600. we would then take off. Sometimes we'd head to Cold Spring Harbor 10 miles north, or Seaford 14 miles southeast, Belmont Lake State Park 17 miles east, or wherever. We'd be gone all day returning at 530 PM. I followed this routine for four summers, and t not only taught one self reliance but bred in me a love of travel and adventure, which I was fortunate enough to be able to incorporate into my life as an archaeologist. Self reliance is good but what I did half century ago is no longer possible in the US and that's unfortunate.
9
i am a dutch mother and i never knew about this dutch ‘rite’. most dutch children are not a member of the scouts.
i would not have allowed my daughter anyway. too dangerous.
there are homeless people living in the woods too, most of them nice people. children don’t know the roads and can be killed by a car in the dark.
4
@jantien You mean those Polish and Bulgarians, working in construction for Dutch contractors, sub contractors sub-sub contractors and sub-sub-sub contractors? You know, working for those Dutch companies with a PO box address in Poland or Bulgaria to avoid taxes? While Dutch construction workers are the largest group of foreign workers in Belgium?
2
Kids getting hit by cars at night (i.e. drunk drivers) has been a real issue in Belgium and the Netherlands. At some point the scouts organization made it mandatory to wear reflective gear while hiking at night.
4
We have some homeless people around here too. Unfortunately some are also on drugs and/or drunk and act out. One even exposed himself to kids.
I shared this article with my mother, who studied abroad in the Netherlands in the 1970s. According to her, Dutch "woods" are not wild, but are actually carefully cultivated and small, making this practice much safer in the Netherlands than it would be in other countries. For the Dutch this is really quite ingenious - the kids feel a sense of danger without being exposed to any actual hazards.
13
@Iris That's exactly what it is: such a "night dropping" is probably the safest thing kids can do. There's nothing "adventurous" or "dangerous" in it. It only looks that way: it's all carefully planned, controled and managed.
It'sv that perfectly planned that even an American journalist takes the bait.
3
My Dutch-Frisian immigrant parents were always totally comfortable allowing my brother and me, either individually or together, to play at a very early age in "the woods" in our very rural area, Out only admonition was to return home in time for meals. Our first and only "tool" was a gifted Mickey Mouse watch. Also at a very early age, we knew exactly how to find our way back from deep in the forests. "The woods" became our favorite playground.
7
This is not only for scouts, I’ve had loads of droppings, starting at elementary school at least three. Christian Summer at least one or two per camp. Sport camps weren’t complete without a dropping. So in total between the age of 9 and 13 at least ten or so. They are fun and even those guys who were affraid back then look back with joy. I don’t think I know anyone who dislikes them.
91
This is a very safe and innocent tradition as these things go. I am sure many Native American and African tribes had initiation rituals that employed the same principles (self-reliance, awareness, practicing sound judgment, containing fear) - only there the stakes were much higher and consequential.
As for child rearing, this is the way to go.
52
So, quite a relief for me to read this article. My 17 year old daughter is walking the Camino de Santiago in Spain right now, by herself, all 500 miles of it. I have gotten so much flak from my family and from other people that I sometimes doubt my decision to let her do it. And, of course, I have been worrying a lot (heat, dehydration, strange men, long days, on and on).
And yet, I think, what a wonderful rite of passage. She still has another year of high school but given how she is handling this journey (she's walked almost 250 miles), I feel very confident in her transitioning into adulthood. And I think she is feeling much more confident in herself also.
They grow up and leave the nest - we all want our children to fly with strong wings - just different ideas of how to accomplish that!
22
"organizers may blindfold the children"
MAY? No, it's compulsary!
"adults look back on their dropping experiences fondly"
Yes, and you know why? Because it makes you a better adult!
"rely only on a primitive GPS"
Excuse me? A real dropping has no GPS help whatsoever. You have been misguided!
"such a normal part of Dutch childhood that many in the Netherlands are surprised to be asked about it"
Sure... why do you even ask, what's the point?
12
These kids are teenagers, just like we were as Boy Scouts 60 years ago. They're only children in the broadest sense of the word. Any group of 12-18 year-olds should have the ability to navigate through the woods and arrive back at the point from which they were taken. The internet and social media have impeded the appreciation of the real world among too many of today's teens.
8
Dutch scouts have dropping. American scouts organize shootingss at the 2019 world jamboree. That is something we in Europe do not onderstand. Shootings are dangerous than droppings.
12
As an 11-year old Dutch boy scout I first participated in a game at night in an unknown, densily wooded area and did so again in different settings in the following years. Scary ? Sure, at times, but exciting too. These are formative events that we cherish in later years. And pretty safe too, as long as planning is done by leaders who balance risk and reward.
7
The Netherlands are a small crowded country. It is a lot harder to het lost here than it is in 99% of the US. That said at 13 I’ve been dropped by our parents in Spain some 3 miles from a holiday house in the middle of nowhere with 4 friends and that was great fun. None of us spoke Spanish. But ok it was day.
4
At Boy Scout camp 50 years ago, we (initiated into a faux tribe, Mic-O-Say) were marched out in twos at double time in the dark of night and dropped off in the Ozark mountains without map, compass, or, of course, with the yet-to-be-invented GPS. Somehow, we all made it back to camp, tired yet exhilarated.
53
A younger friend of mine recently refused to let her 11-year-old daughter walk 1/2 block from school to a restaurant - in a small town - in broad daylight - with several friends. Most of my younger friends don't allow their children to ride a school bus. Kids in the US are so overprotected, I don't know how they're going to survive as adults.
31
Personally, my sleep-away camp experience was all I needed; for myself as well as my now adult-children!
3
I find this horrific. I wonder, what punishment awaited any children who refused to participate in this folly?
I'll add that I grew up in a place so unsafe that I couldn't walk one block after dark to my best friend's house. I guess I should be happy for those who have the luxury of concocting unnecessary danger for their children. They should be charged with reckless endangerment.
2
Their punishment is that they have to go to bed early, that's all. Luckily it is still possible to walk in the dark The Netherlands without fear, especially in the woods where no one is at night. but like the article said it's a fairly normal thing for me as Dutchmen.
4
Why would they be punished?
6
Here with have strict gun laws (basically no guns), decent (psychiatric) healthcare and social security. Makes a society much safer. Punishment? No idea why you would even think that.
7
In Litchfield County, CT, we have black bears & bobcats & foxes - lots of ticks - rabid raccoons - you couldn’t pay me to even walk our roads at night : /
9
While much in this article is correct, e.g. Dutch parents allow young children to take themselves to school either by bike or public transportation, I object to the implication that they are somewhat brutal in their approach to child rearing. As a child, I was sent to grocery stores for some light shopping for bread, milk or razor blades. It was assumed that I could manage the trip, retrieve the items and pay for them. The process boosted my self confidence and helped lay the foundation for independent thinking. It should also be said, that most Dutch children are not members of scouting groups and are not participants in “dropping”.
15
Also what Americans need to take into account when they are commenting on this post is that in general the Netherlands is much easier and safer to navigate then most parts of the US. The Netherlands is very densely populated and doesn't have large nature parks that go for miles. Also most of us can do our shopping by walking no more than half a mile, so a kid that has to go to a store has to walk a shorter distance then a lot of American kids have to walk to their school bus stop.
1
I would have loved something like this, because my parents had been letting me wander around alone in the woods during camping trips since I was 4. I could go as far as I wanted as long as I kept to the trails and could find my way back. Learning how to deal with that kind of freedom, and that kind of responsibility, was a rare but absolutely necessary lesson for a suburban kid to learn during the '60's. It's even more necessary now.
8
@Mary P Madigan Very wise parents, let you venture and give you control with "as long as you can find your way back". I did something similar scary (for me) with my kids and climing trees: "as long as you get yourself down" ; the never hurt themselves (and don't have fear of heights, as far as I know)
3
I grew up in wisconsin (lots of dutch around, so maybe that's one influence) -- this was a rite of passage every summer camp in boy scouts. No big deal, really.
But it was a different time, no doubt about it. "Kids these days" -- or maybe it is better to say "parents these days" ? The way children are coddled and 'protected' turns my stomach.
12
@dl — Parents these days are making the kids these days...
Both the trend toward helicopter parents and the Dutch version of free-range parenting strike me as absurd. Pre-teens are not in charge. They are learning how to be in charge, and how to make responsible decisions. Hopefully, this will result in their not being dependent on their parents for every decision they make when they go to college. Make sure your kids are safe when they're 12 and don't call their professors when they're 18.
9
I am Dutch and the article is going for sensation. We did this every year on our schooltrip. We always had a lot of fun. Indeed, the experience of being independent. But also, just having a good time with friends. On most droppings we were back within 1.5-2 hours. Most 12 years old can walk 2 hours without feeling very tired right?
The adults making sounds is another game... where you have to find let's say 5 different campleaders with different animalsounds. The first team that finds all 5 wins.
25
@Kim probably depends on the camp leaders... We were dropped several km from camp. When you get lost you easily walk for 6+ hours (in our case the winner got food first ;-)
1
The world is a dangerous place, both from the perspective of society and nature. Many years ago, a couple of parents here in Portland, Oregon did a similar thing with their 11 year old kids. One of them wondered off a cliff in the Columbia Gorge. Admittedly a rare event, but there are practices in our culture which cultivate an independent, free spirit as an integral part of enculturation- but they’re constitutive, socializing, homogenizing, which is not a bad thing, given the hostility of alienated human beings and the environment. A shared, meaningful experience in the built world, where we realize our social responsibilities, is the true of religion. Once we find that, looking outward towards the stars becomes a more rewarding project.
4
What a stark contrast to what has happened to our culture. For example, a parent at work was trying to grapple with the fact that her son decided he no longer wanted to play hockey and wanted to do something HE loved instead which had nothing to do with the parents' preferences. He even wanted to find a summer job related to what he loved!
Now why would that be upsetting, really. There was more trauma and grappling with a period of adjustment for the parents than for the child who thought it was just a matter of making his own decision for himself and seguing into it.
There's something terribly wrong with the way kids' lives are being structured today in our country if it's hard for parents to get a grip when a kid decides to gain some independence for himself and structure his own life.
10
Done this loads of times as a kid. The worst one was when our youth leaders dropped us off 250m from our hostel. Only problem, a canal was between us and them. We had to walk 6 miles to the nearest bridge and then 6 back again. Looking back on it, I have a feeling this dropping was more intended to give the leaders some peace and quiet, than for our benefit :-D. Great fun though.
Even better are "Spooktochten" which translate as Ghosttrips. Then children walk a given route (generally at night, often throught a forest) accompanied by an adult who knows the route. Other adults hide along the route dressed up in all kinds of outfits, not unlike those an American might wear on Halloween, and when the kids pass by, you scare the living daylights out of the little tykes. It is awesome!
13
Amen. Orienteering is great. And at the very least, everyone ought to demonstrate competency in map reading and navigation before they are issued a driver's license. The day GPS goes down, half the people in this country won't be able to leave home without getting lost in their driveway.
6
I see many people did this or similar in Scouting, as I did, at 14, an overnight ALONE in the woods. 40 other scouts and leaders scattered all around me, but still alone for the night. We learned to use a compass and map in orienteering, and what to DO if we were lost in the woods. Soon I struck out with a backpack and 2 other Scouts for a weekend hiking the mountains of North Georgia, I was safer than when my Dad was a Scout in swamps of South Georgia. I’ll take bears over gators. Parents are definitely over protective today.
9
@Monte Waddill
At 14 I was 'tapped out" for Order of the Arrow. Spent the night alone in the woods. No communication allowed. A light rain in the early morning made the experience memorable. Not the same as this story, but it did leave a lasting memory.
1
I started taking public transit to school by myself in 5th grade...as a result I became a confident, independent young man with a top-notch spatial memory and the ability to find my way around almost anywhere.
One of the best things my parents ever did for me (along with getting me a Eurail pass as my college graduation present and sending me off to wander around Europe on my own for ten weeks).
17
@Matt I grew up in Los Angeles - zero public transportation. So when my mother forced me (yes, forced me - I didn't want to go!) to go to the UK in 1974 for a month, I was scared - mostly of using public transportation! As it turned out, I survived, used my Brit Rail pass to the max (including going from London to Edinburgh and back), crossed the Chanel and visited Paris and navigated the Metro, all without incident. (Although the IRA bombed the Tower of London the day after I visited it.) I came back home with a much greater sense of confidence than I had when I left.
7
That seems to me a bit extreme, especially in today’s world with adult predators on the prowl. Wouldn’t it be a lot safer to just limit kids’ “screen time” from an early age and encourage outdoor play and activities in safe environment. Oh, yes, but parents then would have to take some responsibility and be consistent in their pursuing a healthier lifestyle...which means getting away from their cell phone and pay attention to their kids! What a quaint concept!
3
@Manuela Bonnet-Buxton: In my country, those scouts groups are usually accompanied by a small group of so-called "cooking parents". They interfer as little as possible (preferably not at all...) but they keep an eye in sight.
I can as well confess now: I was such a cooking parent and during those night droppings we secretly followed those kids using night vision equipment... Nothing out of the ordinary ever happened.
50
@Manuela Bonnet-Buxton Adult predators on the loose? Even the worst kind of human is probably asleep during the dead of night and probably doesn't seek it's prey in forests anyway... I think this is exactly the kind of unfounded overreaction that leads to limiting a child's potential to grow.
5
Just the headline of this article cracked me up. "Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite" Has the author never heard of Native Americans? Rites of passage for youth in the wilderness were common on this continent before the colonizers came.
7
The current generation of American kids have been playdated and heli-parented into a self-entitled adulthood with zero coping skills. No surprise when they are crushed by real world challenges, like say making a living, supporting themselves financially and emotionally.
And they have difficulty competing on so many levels with young adults from other countries. If only life were a video game.
18
@Charlie Redmond Apparently you read the article without noticing that video games are an issue in the Netherlands too.
1
What a wonderful tradition!
What saddens me is that in America we have so many parents that think that somehow the world has become a dangerous place where children can't do anything on their own. Read the comments here...they make me incredibly sad. Go to playgrounds...you rarely see elementary aged kids playing on their own. Why? Danger! Just a few weeks ago in these very pages there was a debate about the dangers of letting kids ride bikes on their own. Danger!
These parents need to get ready for their 20 somethings to come back home after college and live with them.
18
In the U. S., I would agree only if the teens were accompanied by an armed guard. Otherwise, they would be easy prey. Ours is a dangerous country for both adults and children.
9
@DD what? In my town in the USA kids wander around way after dark and are perfectly fine. Not all of the US is the inner city.
1
I'm Belgian,when I was a boy scout (50 years ago) we did this all the time. Why the fuss, all of a sudden?
13
It does sound like fun! - with an appropriate edge. During my Midwestern youth, back in the Neolithic period, we would just take a sandwich in our back pockets, our bikes and/or ponies and the dog & be gone for hours. No GPS, but since it was daylight, we did have the sun.
10
Growing up in upstate NY (Utica), I enjoyed an amount of freedom to wander and go on all-day exploratory bike rides by myself with nothing but a map, a thermos of lemonaide and a PB sandwich in my bike basket. There were a few cautionary warnings from my mother and grandmother as I set out, but I was allowed to venture out alone as an 11-year-old girl to search for places on the city map that I was curious about. Those experiences have served me well in later travels around the world, and though I'm 72 now I still enjoy getting "lost" in my own local woods and figuring out the way back to the dirt road I live on.
28
Wonderful article. The Dutch must have far fewer lawyers and child welfare civil servants! I had my later in life “mini- dropping” experience when I turned 40 (25 years ago) and decided to go on an Outward Bound experience for adults. OB had a 2 day solo camping component with little but a tarp, some rope, a sleeping bag, a bit of food and your own notion about staying warm and sleeping. While discouraged from wandering, you were dropped off at an isolated spot in the Beartooth Wilderness and alone.
I wish I had had a similar experience when I was a younger teenager. I finally began to understand self reliance, perceived risk, and the embrace of total darkness. It has served me well.
10
My version of dropping was when I was sent to Broadway matinees on the bus from Jersey City to a bus station that I recall was under the Dixie Hotel (?? 43rd or 44thStreet ???). I was 12 years old.
I saw "Oklahoma" in its original run but can't recall the performer names. I saw Judy Holiday, Paul Douglas and Gary Merrill in "Born Yesterday." I saw Paul Kelly and James Whitmore in "Command Decision." There were other shows but those are ones that stand out.
She was sending me to these shows because streets in and around the housing project we lived in were dangerous. I did manage to get into plenty of trouble, little of which she ever learned of, but at least I was out of it on some Wednesdays.
9
When I was 32, I did a 10-day Outward Bound tour in the woods in eastern New Hampshire. We were a group of 8 plus two guides. But each of us had a 2-night solo, where we were taken to a certain part of the woods and shown our boundaries, and then left alone for about 36 hours, with very rudimentary aids and a little bit of food. This was in March 1979, and there was a lot of snow! I spent most of the time hunting for firewood, then digging myself a 'grave' to sleep in under a tarpaulin with the wind howling above me. I began singing and talking aloud and discoursing with my mother, who had been dead for two years. It was a very good experience!
12
This 'dropping' tradition explains a lot in relationship to how the Dutch kids do in school. The Dutch have a different parenting philosophy which is geared towards training kids to make decisions and accept responsibility for their decisions. This might be yet another factor why some countries (especially Finland) do so well on the PISA and other high-stakes tests.
21
@mscman45
Man, if I was to do it all again and had any facility for language, I would move to Finland. I believe both my kids would have benefited from their enlightened educational system.
6
Love it! Way back when I was a Boy Scout in the late 1960s, we had a similar exercise where we did orienteering, using only a crude map and a compass to navigate our way between markers deep in the forest. Great memories of sharing roles, arguing over decisions, working as a team. I hope kids still get a chance to have similar experiences today.
8
I took the IND from uptown Manhattan to astronomy class at the old Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History, and to music lessons, around this age; then I took the subway to high school. Lots of city kids did. Why have we allowed society to become so dangerous that we fear to let our children do the same?
14
I just learned why we have no big animals in the wild anymore. The kids ate them all.
15
@Etienne René
LOL
I mean, you have to! After over two hours in the wild...
1
My sons and all their fellow Boy Scouts participated in something similar while learning their orienteering skills. These skills were helpful during Army basic training
3
There are probably no bears in the Netherlands woods.
8
@Wayne No bears, just like 99% of American wilderness.
5
@Wayne Indeed there are not, the most 'dangerous' thing you'd find here are foxes or boars. But you're more likely to run into rabbits, squirrels, deer or maybe an owl if you're lucky.
5
@Jus' Me, NYT We're in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, 20 mile northeast of downtown Los Angeles. Black bears, including in our back yard and on the streets (and in our trash cans), are a common occurrence during "bear season" (maybe March or April to early November). When I go out to my vegetable garden in the back yard I "look both ways" to make sure I don't startle a bear (or get startled by one). And when one gets in my koi pond and goes after the fish, I yell "Bad bear!" and bang a stick on my patio railing. They lumber away, albeit reluctantly. But I don't go hiking before dawn or after dusk since I don't want to run into one on its home territory in the dark.
5
Maybe I'm alone on this, but the only awful thing I read about this practice is that they ate boiled sausages at the end of the dropping when there was a perfectly good campfire to roast them over.
24
@andy the sausages that they are referring cannot be grilled.
What exactly is a "primitive" gps? A compass?
14
@nom de guerre, I'd assume it shows coordinates but not a little pin on a map.
2
@nom de guerre I own an old handheld primitive GPS. It gives only your location. The coordinates, time , date. You can use it as a compass. You can create waypoints. By saving the current location as a waypoint or by entering the coordinates. So if you have a waypoint theb you can set it to point to that location. The device will point an arrow to the direction of the waypoint. And you will see what the distance is to it. There is no route navigation. Only direction and distance. Some devices will also have a map but it will be an extremely primitive map on a very, very huge scale.
2
In America some children get to do this too. At least a particular subset.
They join the army at 18.
12
I had no idea about the tradition... my daughter will have a lot of fun in her scout troop when she goes to camp next summer :)
5
This is a great tradition that I hope is never lost on young adults as a rite of passage. Our family enjoys a similar tradition in our kids life experience. When the children reach the age of 12 or are in their very early teens, we visit Acadia National Park where the children are let off at sea level at the base of Mt. Cadillac and told they will be met at the summit by us later in the day.
The pride that exhibit 4 or 5 hours afterward as they reach the summit overlooking the Atlantic, is palpable and remembered by both parents as well as the children forever.
22
@Brian Eagar Les Rites de Passage are practices of inclusion meant to integrate and consolidate society, meant to dispel the alienation individuals experience between themselves and Nature, others, and the self. I climbed Mt. Cadillac alone when I was 11, and sadly the only thing I experienced was the ritual of exclusion that deepened my alienation. Be happy you had a great family life.
2
I participated in a dropping in The Netherlands when I was an exchange student there in the late 1980's. It was a great adventure for a group of urban teenagers during a weekend getaway at our friend's rural vacation house, in unfamiliar country to the rest of us. His parents blindfolded us and then dropped us off in groups of 3 or 4, several miles from their house. Maybe we had some sort of map- definitely no GPS - and we walked through farm land, country roads and some wooded areas in random patterns until things eventually started to look a bit familiar, and somehow found our way home. Each group made it back within a few hours. It was a really fun adventure and a nice little group competition and team bonding experience. At the time I took this to be a creative party game my friend's parents contrived for us; how fun to know it was a beloved Dutch tradition!
25
We did these as belgian scouts too, and actually looked forward to it.
also: the 3 day trip, where we'd get a destination on the map every day, 100 francs for the 3 days (this was before the euro for me, it's about 2,5USD), and see to not only make it there without counselors, but also find a place to sleep (usually a farm's stables), and gather food from trading with the locals.
good times.
9
A few years ago, when my son was about 10 years old, he went to a summer camp where they had a solo night hike. After dark, the kids were taken in a group somewhere in the woods, about half an hour from the camp. They were they told to walk back to camp alone, one by one, at an interval of about one minute between kids, along the same trail they came from. If a kid didn't want to want to do it, he/she could stay until the end and walk back with the counselor. All the children accomplished the task, except for the camp bully, who was so scared that he ran all the way back to camp in 10 minutes, passing all the kids ahead of him along the way.
Now that my son is a counselor, they don't do this anymore. They have also cut down their overnight backpacking trip from a modest 15 miles over 3 days to pitching a tent, spend the night, hike 5 miles to the next site, pitch tent, spend another night, then walk half a mile back to the bus. Very sad.
11
I see small children riding the subway or the bus, or walking on the street here in New York all the time. I'd say that takes a lot more guts and self-assured independence than this.
9
@HKGuy in the Netherlands, doing such things is considered so ordinary that no one would even take notice. Unless they're like only 5? That would be cause for concern. ;-)
1
It does happen in the U.S. and was one of the more memorable episodes of pre-adolescence Scouting that we had as members of Troop 373 in Ft Hamilton, Brooklyn at Scout camp up in the Catskills somewhere, maybe TMR Boy Scout camp. As a Tenderfoot Scout we were awed and truly moved by the 'legend' of something called Dulagaors - beasts who wandered around the woods at night and through which we had to do a midnight hike. And it was really spooky if not downright terrifying to a kid in sixth grade or so. The fabled Dulagators would also bellow from the darkness along the trail we were put on and I can tell you, it scared the bejusus out of me and my comrades.
The twist of the thing was that a year or so later we were let in on the secrets of the legend and became Dulagators ourselves and had our turn screeching at some hapless young scouts and dressed in some kind of mask and cloth. I guess it was supposed to be our moment in the sun - or moon - but for some reason, it hit my funny bone - the absurdity of the thing - and I couldn't stop myself from laughing hysterically as we tried to make some kind of terrifying noise. Might have been that by 8th grade my career in scouting was coming to an end and my preoccupations were about heading into the city to attend Stuyvesant H.S. Still, the Dulagator episode was something I never forgot. It sticks to the back fields of my mind like a nightmare/ heavenly visit you didn't necessarily want to have but one you would never forget.
7
You do need to think about the fact that the forest in The Netherlands is just as big as a park in the United States or even smaller. Also every where on the side of the road the are directionsigne's to each city that is close to the spot your are standing now. So it's not as hard as it looks. It's just a great experience in a save environment. And no we don't go on ice-skates to work ;)
18
It does sound like fun but would be dangerous in Canada and some parts of the US where you could easily get lost not to mention voracious insects and wild animals, some dangerous.
9
This is not just a Dutch thing, we do this in Belgium too. Even though I was never a scout, we would ask our parents to drop us somewhere as night had fallen and we would make our way back home. We spent many a summer night that way with siblings and cousins.
11
In new York city we call this sending your 11-year-old child alone on the subway to middle school for the first time
31
Another great article by Ms.Barry.
I am no Dutch but this idea of teaching kids to be independent at an early age - not bad at all.
I find over parenting in many countries.
I spend winters in Mumbai.
Rich folks in Mumbai will not allow kids to ride in commuter buses or trains. I know of parents who for experience let a kid ride in a bus during day - just once. But the bus is followed by his parents chauffer driven car.
Some of these kids - after a life time in Mumbai - would not know how to get back home without their driver. i
Then again, we know the Scandinavian custom of leaving babies outside home on a porch or outside a restaurant on a sidewalk for fresh air.
What was interesting to note was not one selfie was posted.
That itself shows much growing.
11
Droppings is not a Dutch thing: I guess it’s a scout thing. The Netherlands has no natural forest our forests are artificial and small. Scouting seems to me a wonderful pastime but, like our forests, scouting is not big in Holland.
Nice fiction article but I think I can go around all my friends and non of them will feel dropping is a Dutch thing.
17
@Joost
Honestly, as a father of three (not a boy scout in sight) I am absolutely sure it will be impossible for any one of my children not to go on a dropping. Also, I don’t think I know many people who haven’t been on one...
1
I grew up in the Netherlands and fondly remember de 'spoortochten", one of the most fun activities I participated in as a teen. I've been on many "droppings" although I've never heard it call that. They were usually organized by the school or a club. It's true the woods are not as big in Holland as in America, but still large enough to get lost though, and wander fort hours, lol.
When raising my own children here in America, I have bemoaned the trend of helicopter-parenting and the general taboo on ever letting your child out of your sight. The overprotection of American children loomed large and stifled many adventures, even though we seem to think nothing of having 8, 9, 10 year olds act as traffic safety patrol at school crossings, at which locations I have seen some hairy situations. Later we throw them to the lions when negotiating college loans, credit cards and health in insurance, but that can all be done behind the computer, so it's fine I suppose.
14
What does it say that, in the country of Tom Sawyer, this experience seems too rugged for the little darlings? We did similar stuff in summer camp in the 60s; a counsellor was with us, as passive backup, but basically we were hauled off to the woods and had to figure out how to get back on our own. A great metaphor for adulthood that gets physically imprinted on the body. Something that, with a bit of modification for safety, is good for everyone.
14
@Oriflamme
In the US , where universal health care does not exist, many homeless and mentally ill people seek refuge in wooded areas. I have seen makeshift shelters on hikes. It seems that children in the Netherlands have only cars to fear.
11
Lotta comments about how the wooded areas are small and kids aren't in any real mortal danger, mocking this activity. It just shows that adults never even try to get into the heads of kids: They don't understand anything about the world like adults do. We force them to behave certain ways but enforced behavior does not indicate what is in their minds, hearts and souls. They are tender. Lovely to hear about kids being treated like kids instead of being shoe-horned into our very, very "adult' world then watched by helicopter parents. If the world was more hospitable to children many parents wouldn't have to be overly protective. i was lucky enough to grow up in a G and PG world -- a public square appropriate for all of society.
11
"Primitive GPS". I guess tech has advance far enough that these words can be strung together in a meaningful way.
13
Hahaha! This is so funny! If the average American reads this, he or she might imagine extensive forrests upstate New York, Montana or North Dakota. But all people in The Netherlands have a totally different kind of woods in their heads when reading this article. Not only is The Netherlands a relatively small countries when it comes to its geographical size, it is ine of the most densely populated countries in the world. Ting lost in one of its tiny forests is truely impossible. You might not see a light shining in or around a home for an hour, if your try hard and plan your trip really well, but that would be it. If anyone knows a forest where you can get lost here, I’m in!
30
@Marcus Rolloos. Yeah, that is true. I’ve ‘flown’ all over Western Europe using google maps and sadly there is barely any wild to be found. It was almost impossible to find any woods where you could be more than half mile from a road, barely any even quarter mile. And most of the ‘forests’ showed signs of being more like hyper managed tree farms than real, true, natural forests.
Many parts are nice and rural, more rural than say NJ in the USA, but so few with anything wild. Even NJ, most densely populated state in then US has much more extensive and natural forests than probably 95-99% of Western Europe. A bit sad really.
1
Not a bad idea but only with adequate safeguards. Joining the Scouts comes to mind.
9
In the Netherlands, there really are no big forests or wilderness areas similar to those in the United States. Especially in the built up areas near Utrecht, where at least one of those photos was taken, you are never more than a short walk to a road, or more likely, a bike path... In the U.S., there are many places, even in the Northeast, where you could be lost and die of exposure before anyone could find you. I don't know of areas like that in the Netherlands.
20
One might forgive “over protective” parents in the United States where school shootings have become a reality - imagine dropping your child off at elementary school (never mind the woods) never to see him or her again. What is most striking about this fascinating article is the general feeling of safety that underpins the dropping practice. That is what has become, unfortunately, so exotic here and that’s the paradox in the piece.
57
I fondly remember doing orienteering exercises in my Boy Scout Troop in Rhode Island back in the 1970's. Our scout master would blindfold us as he drove us in the back of his pickup truck deep into the woods. He would drop the small group us off with hand-written compass headings and # of paces and leave us with two flashlights. As we made our way back to the campsite, we would find hidden treasures along the way - i.e., a box of Graham crackers first, then a bag of marshmallows suspended from a tree branch, then the chocolate bars. About 2 hours or so later we would arrive at the campsite with a nice fire going and be rewarded with our s'mores. Great memories and certainly independence-building for a group of 12-15 year-old kids.
37
We grew up that way as rural farm kids. Age appropriate work load and responsibility. My order of the arrow ceremony in Boy scouts involved a dropping and being able to navigate in strange terrain was part of boy scouts back then. My career took me to remote places where I was entirely alone way before the existence of GPS or cell phones, just a compass and maps and sometimes in locations where there were no maps. I am all for the practice of dropping as described and supervised.
22
I actually went to a summer camp where this was done: about 10 campers and one 18 year old counselor would be dropped 20 miles (yes 20 miles) from camp at night with a map, flashlights, a roll of toilet paper and $10. We were expected to find our way back to camp in 24 hours. This being the United States, we would find someone's porch to sleep on, offer to do chores for the surprised homeowner in the morning, then find a bungalow colony where we would perform a repertoire of songs and dances and pass the hat, then use the proceeds to binge on sweets at a country bakery and take a cab back to the camp! The camp is still in existence, but Survival Day, unsurprisingly, is not. Despite the different circumstances from the Dutch version, (and there are common origins) the experience was an invaluable confidence-building lesson in self-reliance and group collaboration.
Of course the world has changed. That was then, this is now. There is more crime, more guns and more distrust in rural areas, which would make such an exercise impermissibly risky in today's world and I recognize that even back then the way the exercise was conducted was well outside any acceptable norm. And I didn't send my kids to that camp.
14
@Susan Leboff
What a great experience that makes me jealous for not having had that when I was a kid.
I would note, however, that the notion that there is more crime and violence is a common misnomer. Violent crime peaked in the early 90's and has been generally declining ever since; just Google images for violent crime in the U.S. and the charts will reflect that.
It reflects a common belief that sometime (probably when we were kids) the world was an idyllic place we only need to return to; for example, how many times in your life have you heard the phrase "You can't trust anybody anymore."? The truth is that there has always been crime and dishonesty: Moses didn't come down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments because everyone was behaving themselves.
18
@Susan Leboff A lovely experience - but there is less crime now, not more.
1
I did something similar to this when I was pledging my fraternity in college, and it was great fun, especially since 10 of the 12 of us were city kids and had no idea what we were doing, trying to find our way through the woods in upstate New York. It took us like 6-7 hours to get back to the house, but it was a great bonding experience for us, and lots of fun despite a few minor injuries and getting lost 3 times.
Any adult who allowed children to do this in the US though, would be sued by some whiny helicopter parent before the kids even got back from the walk though. This is why we can't have nice things.
12
This sounds absolutely horrible. Between the two extremes of helicopter parenting & "dropping", I hope there is a kinder, better way to parent.
6
@LakesOcean my kids lived for this sort of thing and we aren't even Dutch. I think a huge problem with childhood in the US is found at the end of your post - parent as a "verb" is why kids lack the confidence to explore the cities they go to college in. Don't know how to deal with teachers and professors on their own. Etc.
9
@Multimodalmama Parenting *is* very much a verb - starting day 1. But to speak to the intentions behind your words... I certainly support children being independent and handling their own problems as well as interactions - difficult or not. If they like this activity - sure go for it. What I don't support is the "tough love" philosophy - starting from 'sleep training' to 'you HAVE to finish what's on your plate or you don't get off your high chair' to 'you are on your own with the bully'.
The child should have the inviolable trust that the parent is in their court. That's not helicopter parenting... far from it. It is just compassionate parenting.
Maybe this article doesn't describe the real spirit of this activity. Just based on this article though, it certainly feels like a scary activity forced on (at least some) children.
1
I've been participating in droppings my whole childhood. I don't have traumas from is and loved them when I was a child. Especially during puberty, when the girls were scared in the forest and hugged up to the boys to feel safe :-) Being blindfolded wasn't an issue as well. Over the years, it even helped you, because you "learned" to keep at least a bit track of the trip. I would put my kids into droppings without any doubt, they can only learn from it.
10
Oh yeah I did this (or rather, it was done to me) on several occasions when I was a kid and it was scary, but also a ton of fun. It's funny how, until reading this, it never occurred to me that people abroad would find this weird or unsettling. And no, ffs kids should not be allowed to bring their phones nowadays--that would completely defeat the purpose. Bear in mind that Dutch woods are not that big and would be quite hard to get lost in for very long. It is the closest thing we get to a rite of passage.
21
When I attended summer camp in mid 1970s our nocturnal activity was to hunt down Vietnam vets ( our camp counselors ) in the Maine woods. Avoiding porcupines and poison ivy was the greater task. Trust me, we never caught the combat hardened USMC jungle men. They would tell us story of how we stepped right over them in the tangled brush but we were oblivious to their presence.
16
Fascinating article. I am a middle aged man of Dutch heriitage, and while all of my grandparents were born in the Netherlands, my parents were both born here. But, as young children we vacationed in a small cabin (a euphemism for a shack) in a very remote forest area inhabited by many wild animals, including snakes and bears. Yet my parents encouraged us to take late night walks into the completely black forest and then find our way home. I wonder if their permission was a vestige of the custom you describe. Unfortunately, I can't ask them.
15
Very refreshing to read this. I have been surrounded at work for the past few years by helicopter parents who homeschool their kids. The kids have no choices, usually the parents decide what profession their kids will have when they become adults. Medical doctor is one of the favorites. I really applaud the Dutch for teaching independence. Let those kids learn to make their own decisions.
34
This is pretty common in South Africa as well, on school trips. I remember one school trip to the middle of the free state, where we were taught to catch fish, build a shelter and toilet, filter water etc and one night we were dropped off in the middle of nowhere and told to make our way back. While these survival skills have never had to be utilised (I remain a thoroughly urban animal), it was a good experience and as a child growing up in a dangerous city (Johannesburg had the highest murder rate in the world at that time), it felt so liberating to be able to just walk around outside on our own
16
I did it at the introductory camp of high school, first night, first time class mates meet. Great for class building. We got lost twice (no GPS yet!) and found the camp site by shear luck ;-)
As for "danger": we got thirsty.
10
As a pre-teen living at a residential treatment center for “emotionally disturbed” kids in the suburbs of Cleveland, I recall going spelunking (caving), with a group of 8 peers. Entering the cave system through a narrow hole in the ground we descended several levels under the guidance of a junior counselor supposedly experienced in the sport. It was physically difficult, and scary!
Several hours later, having developed a small degree of confidence, our counselor allowed us to take the lead and navigate our way out. But when we arrived at our exit, the small opening had collapsed: it was blocked with large rocks and an angry swarm of bees made approach impossible to dig our way out.
Fifty years ago, with no cell phones and only a dying flashlight for each of us, I recall my friends and I being brought to tears as night began to fall.
After what seemed like a half hour of immobilizing fear spent in the dark to ration our battery power, our counselor revealed that we had all blindly taken a wrong turn, which no one had questioned. After backtracking we located our intended exit, spectacularly clear of rocks — and bees. We were gently lectured on the importance of taking care to note and even mark our inbound route, as if our life depended on it.
Was our adventure planned, or just an accidental learning experience? I’m guessing the latter, as it was a lesson that always stuck with me.
21
Actually, even adults have droppings like this. We did it several times on a yearly work outing. Good honest fun :)
Of course, this is only possible because there aren't grizzly bears around here. Or crazed gun owners ;)
38
If you are ever lost in the U.S. and stop in a gas station/convenience store to ask directions, look for an elderly clerk. Younger people have no idea where they are and were driven to work by their moms.
22
@Cass Benoit Even when driving themselves, like my 17 year old does, he still has no idea how to give directions because he syncs his phone to the car Bluetooth and uses his maps app to direct him everywhere. It's crazy. He still doesn't know street names after driving for over a year and insists he doesn't need to know them because he has GPS. I ask him what if something happened to his phone GPS and he looks pained and says then he'd figure it out but why worry since it most likely won't happen. None of his peers know how to verbally give directions either.
11
@Cass Benoit My now 24 year old son has always had a better sense of direction than i do, including when he was about 3 and I was 43. It was always handy to go shopping with a kid who would always know where we left our car in the parking lot.
1
This should be done with members of Congress and all presidential candidates. No consultants allowed.
59
This "dropping" thing is well known in The Netherlands, but not many children do it.
We have an American neigbour. She once told me something I was totally unaware of.
In The Netherlands the vast majority of children go to school not by bus or driven by their parents. Some take public transportation, but the most go... (of course, they are Dutch!) on their bicycles.
When they are in primary school, many children are first accompanied by their parents (also on their bicycles, teaching their children to be carefull in traffic), but as soon as they go to High School they go on their own. If the distance is a bigger (and boring) they ride with friends.
When my daughter was 10, she didn't want us to accompany her to school anymore; it would have been too childish. (There were parents that would help all children to cross the most dangerous crossings.)
By the time my daughter was going to High School (the ride was further and morre complicated) it was totally unthinkable, that we would help her: she would have been extremely ashamed of herself. All children think that way.
Is this taking a risk too big (just as in the example of the "dropping")? For us Dutch the general answer is: life is a risk, a child has to learn to take its own responsiblity and it is better to prepare your children gradually.
My American neigbour told me how much she apreciated this for her children.
So please see the "dropping" story in this kind of perspective.
See you on your bicycle over here!
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@Cees I remember this from my childhood in Germany. We all rode our bikes to school, in this vast horde of kids, kind of like a swarm of bikes. The Netherlands, though, is a bicyclist's paradise even compared to Germany. It is so safe to ride there. I've taken my kids on biking holidays in the Netherlands just so they can see the setup there.
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@Cees
Wonderful post, thank you.
I'm in my sixties and walked or bicycled to school my entire life, parents didn't drive their children anywhere.
In the winter we walked or you could cross country ski to school some days.
I now live in a large city and my children walked, bicycled or took public transit to school.
Developing life skills is important, yes you worry about your children however they need these skills for adulthood.
5
@Cees I grew up in the 1970’s in the Chicago suburbs. Beginning about 6th grade we walked or rode our bikes the 1.3 miles to school. Around the same time, my sister and I took the bus to our local downtown area, spent the day running errands and st the library, and took the bus home. When we were 13, we started taking the commuter train into Chicago (40 miles away) to spend the day at the museums or shopping at Water Tower Place. All on our own; no adults. We had maps and addresses and directions of where we wanted to go and walked or took taxis. We planned it out on our own. If you teach your children independence, they will learn to manage on their own & if they run into trouble, to ask questions or ask for help. If you teach your children to be fearful of their surroundings, they’ll never do anything.
4
I may understand how you would find this " tradition " strange, when compared to US forrests with there rough terrain and wild animals. The children participating in these games are not forced to nor are they not looking forward to it. It's usually the highlight of an event. Like the last day of middle school, or to celebrate the end of a sports competition. Mind you, although accidents may have occured in the past, this is rare. More accidents happen with swings and you have them too. The kids are given the illusion that they are left alone but everything is controled and monitored. Me - as a kid - i was scared to bits. But the feeling of reaching camping grounds was truely great. I felt like i had accomplished something.
24
In 1964 I became a Queens Scout in Canada and 2 years later I became a Master Army Cadet. Both experiences involved camping, bushcraft etc.
I agree with the Dutch approach to "Dropping". My sons did mountaineering and camping during their earlier years and they have benefitted too in my opinion.
More of the world should stop giving kids all sorts of reasons to be afraid of everything - even their shadows..
23
"It may sound extreme"
Haha yes if you are scared of the world, scared of your own neighbours. And with people walking around with guns. Happy to use them when someone enters your property (instead of just talking).
Oh America how it must be to live there, and be afraid of everything. Sometimes it feels like people there just lost contact with reality. I think it might actually just be what those spoiled brats need: A (nice and fun) lesson in self-dependence. Of course this doesn't count for all children.
These reactions , mostly from American parents, scare me way more than a 'dropping'. Let your childern live, experience, be independent! And most of all have fun and let them be children! That sad come and do a 'dropping here'.
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As a Dutch parent raising young children in the US I’ve discovered that it is easy for Dutch people to comment negatively on the way Americans raise their kids and to some extent they are right. Kidnappers are in fact extremely rare (most people couldn’t be paid to be stuck with someone else child). But having your kids bike to school is in fact really dangerous, as Americans (at the least the ones here in New England) drive like maniacs and to have my the kindergartener do a lock down drill at school sends chills down my spine. The dangers as simply not comparable and I’ve discovered that even though I would love to hang on to the independence the Dutch way of raising children hopes to instill in them, it is in many parts of the US simply not possible.
20
@Rick I guess I don't know where you're coming from, except from the jaundiced and often inaccurate stereotypes that Europeans have of the USA. The children in my neighborhood walk to school, they join hiking groups, they bike around, they play with other children. They are afraid of nothing, save what they should be afraid of (passing cars, etc.)
Is it like that in every neighborhood in the USA? Of course not - the USA has 330 million residents living in a highly geographically diverse environment. What goes for Manhattan is totally different than a town in rural Utah. In any case the country is a far cry from the homogeneous floodplain of the Netherlands.
3
There was a similar tradition in our Boy Scouts of America Troop 8 in Caracas, Venezuela, in the early nineties. One of the requirements for the Eagle Scout was to complete the Order of The Arrow challenge, where scouts were left at different spots in the fields not far from the campsite to fend for themselves alone throughout the night. They would sleep alone on the ground, wake up in the morning, and make their way back to the camp. Most had stories of how they were terrified by rustling sounds and how some found some fresh dung close by when they woke up. They continue to be proud of going through the challenge and have fond memories of the experience.
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@Kumar We had a very similar initiation practice in NY when I was a scout in the late 90s/early 2000s. It was one of my favorite memories.
4
To drive in a loop-de-loop must be a very Dutch thing; usually this requires an airplane.
3
My wife's grandchildren have been coddled by their parents to the point that neither have shown the least bit of interest in even leaving the house as teenagers. The oldest is now 17 with absolutely no interest in learning to drive a car and the youngest, just now 13 has told his grandmother he never wants to move away from home.
They would be absolutely and utterly lost in every way imaginable if they were dropped into the same world I grew up in.
20
@Martino Where do they live though? I took Driver's Ed when I was 17 or so, but I didn't bother getting my license until I was 23 because I lived in NYC knew that I'd be 40 before I owned a car (32 now, still don't own one).
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@Samuel - I think it's safe to assume that Martino's wife's grandchildren don't live in NYC or another large city with extensive public transportation that would make learning to drive unnecessary. NYC kids may not need to know how to drive, but they need to know how to navigate the subway and bus systems, something they learn to do as soon as possible. My college roommate, a Manhattan native, didn't learn to drive until she was 23, but she could get herself anywhere in NYC via subway and bus long before the age at which she would have qualified for a license. Growing up in the Bronx in the 1960s, my mom took two city buses to get to and from school every day. My grandparents both worked and couldn't possibly have taken her themselves, and that era was not one of hand-holding anyway. My mother had to pay attention and learn the routes. Being late to Catholic school because she couldn't figure out the bus was not an option.
I think Martino's post was more about kids today not wanting to be independent, or being so sheltered that they are afraid to take even the most mild of risks in order to become so. These children should be encouraged to be safely independent. They are going to miss out on so much of life otherwise. The 80s/90s, when I grew up, wasn't a glorious era but it did afford us kids a certain amount of freedom. Barring illnesses or developmental issues, anyone still attached at the hip to his or her parents after a certain point was looked upon as odd.
4
@Martino That situation is so extreme it's no reflection on America or Americans. a situation that could happen anywhere. The kids will have to adjust to real life eventually, but their parents have certainly done them no favors.
2
One thing US readers should bear in mind is that woods in the Netherlands - especially in the urban western Netherlands where about half the population lives - are nowhere near as extensive as many North American forests. It's hard to walk more than five or ten minutes in any direction without coming to a house or a road.
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Not to mention the black and brown bears, wolves, coyotes, lynx, cougars and other creatures that one might encounter in a North American setting. And a “primitive” GPS. I believe that’s called a compass . . .
8
@MRtk Believe it or not, the first wolfpacks have been observed in dutch forests. There are also wild boar, and an occasional runaway truck ;-)
6
Both my girls did this in the Swiss scouts when they were thirteen. And it was always done in late November during the night. Some kids even do a 50km overnight hike
11
Quite a few states allow kids to hunt alone at age 10 or 12. Some require kids to be older.
Look at the area around Utrecht on Google Earth. A person would be hard pressed to travel more than a mile without finding a farm or road. No doubt traffic noise and artificial light make it even more difficult to feel isolated.
On top of that, these kids appear to be in groups and from the comments trained in scouting.
It seems almost too trivially easy to be fun. Navigating Euro Disney might be harder.
9
After all that, no fried meatballs?
5
as mentioned by others, don't forget this is in a part of the world that is one of the most densely populated, wealthiest and safe. what they call a forrest in the Randstad is what most people would consider a park.
21
"Peculiarly Dutch Summer Rite"? No idea where Ms Barry gets her info from, but it's far from the truth to suggest that en masse Dutch children are being dropped into a forest. Maybe a tiny tiny fraction of the population who are involved in scouting, which is really really small in the Netherlands anyway. For sure I don't know anyone who has ever done this. So cute story, but to suppose that this is a standard thing in how the Dutch raise their kids, is rather misleading I fear.
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Dear Thijs,
I live in The Netherlands and as a teenager I went to summer camps (no scouting camps) every summer.
And each camp we would have a ‘dropping’. I remember vividly waking up next to a mummified cat in a barn one morning - we obviously did not find our camp during the night and decided to spend the night in the hay.
So I do not know about nowadays - im 56 years old - but droppings were quite the thing in my youth. And I loved it!
31
@Thijs Faas Vrzal Maybe its different around Amsterdam... I had 2 droppings organized from school summer camps. Not necessarily only boyscouts do this. All the football teams, tennis clubs and all others around this area did the same.
10
@Thijs Faas Vrzal I am 54 years old and had my first dropping when I was 9 on summercamp. Loved it! My children also had several droppings. So I don't know why you don't know this.
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Dear Dutch parents: if you think this is a fun, character-building activity—being driven blindfolded to the middle of the woods at night and left there—please do it with other adults, not children who can’t really consent to this.
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@Emme B
Surely Emme, you need to have done this once to lnow how much fun this can be and satisfying to bring it off successfully.
Or would you prefer your children to experience thrills from computer games or watching scary movies on television.
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@Emme B
Went on a few droppings as an 11-13 year old and thoroughly enjoyed the experience, as did all my classmates. Being blindfolded just added to the mystery and fun of being in the woods at night. All of us knew we were being monitored even if it was from a distance.
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@Emme B
Did you read the article until the very end? Kids themselves love droppings, most of them before, but surely every one of them afterward. One of the kids himself said it at the very end; a dropping surely beats a Playstation, and "he said that someday when he had children, he wanted them to experience a dropping". Most parents who send their children on a dropping, experienced droppings themselves - it's not just scouting that organizes them, neatly every summer camp does.
22
British schools offer the Duke of Edinburgh award which includes an overnight hike as part of the program. Students have to learn map reading skills and carry their own packs of camping gear and food. Above all, the group must stay together. It’s an excellent challenge that requires team work, cooperation, and fitness.
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I'm a Dutch sociologist and am totally unaware of such a "rite": I've never done it, nor do I know anyone who's ever told me he/she did. Only some 3% of Dutch youth is a member of the boy scouts where I guess it happens most.
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@Flip Schrameijer Maybe depends on the area you live in. Im from around Gouda. Over here all clubs do it ( tennis clubs, football clubs, scouting clubs, even middle school used to do it). I had about ... 8 or 9 droppings between me being 11 and 17 years old. 5 with the scouts, 2 with school, and some more with just random summer camps and events i went to around that age.
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@Flip Schrameijer well Flip it is never too late to learn. I being 54 years old had my first dropping when I was 9 amd my children have had several.
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Flip, that cannot be true. I gave biology lessons at a, let's call it high school, and every school camp had a thing like this, for the younger children - 12 - 14 - it was something easier and safer, but certainly in the dark and in the woods, if any, and the older ones like in the article. Sometimes in the rougher woods of Belgium even... Yours friends didn't talk about it because of the triviality of the thing. But of course you can do it yet. Have fun
1
In America these children would immediately be enveloped in a thick protective coating of liability lawyers waiting for them to stub a toe or be scratched by a thorn bush. Afterward, the unscathed ones would all be diagnosed with PTSD.
I think I want to move to the Netherlands. How hard is it to learn the language?
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@John Vance I'd love to move to the Netherlands too--great country and culture (and home of my ancestors and relatives) but alas learning the language is not for the faint of heart. Despite my best efforts my mom always told me I spoke Dutch like a German. Note: this is not a compliment in the Netherlands!
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@John Vance No need to. All our TV is in english, most people here know basic english. I know a lot of english-speaking people living in the netherlands without knowing the language. Especially around Amsterdam, the english language is more prevelant than dutch.
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@John Vance
Left Amsterdam 55 years ago and of course today still speak American English with a Dutch accent, somehow notoriously hard to get rid of. No worries, in The Netherlands, everybody, children included, speak perfect unaccented English, a result of early indoctrination to American shows on Dutch TV.
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I grew up in the 50s. Back then I had 6 siblings, dad took the only car to work everyday and we all roamed at will on foot or on bikes. We had no choice but to figure out most things for ourselves.
When raised in that environment with a set of good values, one develops confidence. Once you learn that you can make things happen, you lose your fear.
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Teaching your kids how to function independently is the most important skill a parent can pass down.
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@Matt My own kids became extremely independent from necessity early on. I spend a large part of my own youth away from home and my parents pretty much growing up in the woods then later in the mountains of Montana then later hitch hiking around the US until I finally had kids of my own. I always protected them, but gave them the freedom to fail, fall down, skin knees and roam the neighborhood all day if they so chose which they often did, but they also knew their limits. Theft and lying were NEVER tolerated and carried stiff penalties.
My son at age 10 or so once stole a silver dollar from my dads house earlier in the day and I caught him with it back at my house that evening so I marched him at a real brisk pace a good 3 miles uphill the entire way (faster than his legs could keep up with mine really, but he kept up anyway) straight to grampas house to explain to him what he stole. He never once repeated the theft to my knowledge.
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Boy Scouts, New Mexico, ca. 1963. Initiation into the Order of the Arrow. Nightfall. Blindfolded, we were led away from the campsite with just a sleeping bag and deposited somewhere in the countryside. Find your way back to camp in the morning.
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@FLYHAT ...To add to what I wrote: Each boy was isolated, no one in earshot or visible at daybreak.
Went for a solo hike up the mountain of a former Colorado mining town. Turned around after a couple hours because i didn't have “orange” clothes on (for hunters to see) and didn't bring any whistle / bells (to scare the bears). But then i saw an abandoned mine shaft and went in there -left my backpack at the entrance just in case of a collapse. That was an exciting few hours, albeit maybe foolish.
3
Sorry, but it is neither peculiar, nor Dutch nor 'children'.
It's just what the children who are young _scouts_ do, in all of Europe, everywhere and not only in summer.
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(1-3) As a child I often participated in droppings. I've always thought it was fantastic. From the age of 11 you go into the forest under the guidance of older children. All very exciting. you are not just dropped! in the year during the group attendance you first learn route techniques such as "map and compass" and at the summer camp you are then "dropped" on an evening of course it is exciting and it is difficult for the first time in the dark and in a forest. All sounds an owl that needs a bat that startles your flashlight and that scary dark forest what makes this good? You already know the boys and girls you interact with all year round during scouting attendances. The elderly take the lead, they know it is your first time and take care of you. they take you with each step that is done at this intersection should we go left right or straight ahead? they already know more than you but also let you watch and decide. You learn to trust the elderly in your group, they teach you the route techniques and self-confidence, and make decisions. during the years that you get older you take new children back into the forest, you learn to lead, reassure to delegate and take charge when necessary. It contributes to your sense of responsibility for others. Later when you are older all very useful skills. we have forests, certainly also natural for example the "Holterberg" and national park "Veluwe" but we also have small places in those areas. read more.. (see next comment from me)
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You should also not think that we are doing nothing to guarantee safety. we always received an emergency envalop which contained a telephone number that could be called. it was also agreed a certain time that you should be back. If you didn't, you walked to the first intersection you encountered and stayed there to be picked up. the groups run on average 2.3 / 2.5 miles per hour and then you know as a camp leader in which area to search. As guidance you know exactly how the young people think because you always did it yourself! Nowadays, each group receives an envalop with a telephone containing the number that can be called if something does not go as it should.
"share location" with the camp leaders is enabled and they can see exactly where you are. (in the Netherlands we have a 4G mobile coverage of approximately 98%)
Every country has its pros and cons. We look very strangely at the firearm policy in the U.S. we even think it is absurd to let children shoot with a firearm or have one in the house. this summer the world jamboree takes place in the U.S. our children can participate in the shooting with firearms section there. With us a real No-Go firearms are illegal here. But when my son is at your camp, I also think he should experience your way of live and your traditions. I trust the camp leaders that this is done safely enough.
10
So fun to read an article about my home country. I would have never thought about the concept of a 'dropping' as something that would be so fascinating to foreigners. In general, I'd say the tradition is a lot more innocent than this article suggests. Especially if they are wearing reflectors and a mobile phone for emergency situations. In this time where children grow up almost intertwined with technology, it can be an impactful event to teach children some self sufficience and to created some awareness in regards to how dependent they are on technology, in every aspect of their lives.
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I was “tramping” throughout. Europe and the time before, during, and after Chernobyl, Now I’m probably going to have some uncomfortable dreams after reading this article
Wow. First the Netherlands does have forests, and there are are hills... mostly near Maastricht. Note its proximity to Belgium, where some of the comments came from.
When I read this article I asked dear hubby if he had heard of this, and he had not. His father, Herman, was from a town near Amsterdam, and hubby still has a cousin living near a town close to the German border.
Hubby is from a family very affected by WWII.
While Herman was in boarding school his mother and his siblings were imprisoned by the Germans because his father was in hiding (town aldermen, resistance... the story changes). So during summers and some other non-specified time (again, story time) he spent time at a farm. Where he bicycled food to his town at night.
The war ended. Herman graduated from high school, and signed up to the Dutch Army as they lost while Indonesia gained Independence. (we have an interesting Delft plate commissioned by hubby's grandmother to that failed effort in our kitchen) Herman emigrated to Canada due to lack of employment. His kids never heard of this "tradition."
Seriously, how long has this "tradition" been around? Did it happen in the 1930s? All I know is I seem to be married to the only person born on Vancouver Island who refuses to go camping, something I did often as a kid (and both a girl scout and an Explorer Scout). Le sigh.
Also, it seems his cousin's kids have an issue with the lack of bathroom locks. They are antique doors!
3
@Chris I have no idea if it happened in the 30s, but it was very common when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s. I live in the UK now, so glad to see this is still a thing!
5
You CRAZY? Never ever do anything like that in the US.
Not ever!
In the US, you keep your eyes and a GPS on your kids at all times.
3
So how is it that so many of us survived the 70's? My kids often want to hear stories about my "adventures" as a youth. More than once, I've heard them wish aloud that they could have such freedoms.
Over-protective parenting isn't doing our kids any favors.
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@Arthur Y Chan No not crazy. I did many droppings and organized even many more. It is not that important. The forest was about 5 miles by 5. Children are warned to be carefull on ways where where cars could be(in principle we avoided those), biking lanes are acceptable, unpaved better. No Gps, phones or maps where allowed (except a handrawn map with instructions). Parents could not join because they where more scared then the kids. The kids loved it. Never had a real real problem (except with to carefull parents because a kid got wet feet ( better to his middle), but that is the adventure)
2
The Dutch culture of letting their children loose might teach children to be more independent, but it doesn't outweigh the risk and danger of taking them out as early as 2-3 am. Knowing the children's mind is always playful they are still not capable by themselves, any potential threat might hurt them from tripping, kidnapped, and breaking bones. Children will always be children until a certain aged of becoming a young adult, reconsidering the tradition in more older age might be more ideal because they have more experience and a more developed brain to survive from threats and becoming independent.
@Jian As a child I went on a dropping. And we followed the rules because we knew the campleaders were serious about it. Some children went to the drop off place and didn’t want to do the dropping so the leaders took them back to the camp. only children who feel ready will participate and no one is forced to do it. Later I became a camp leader and found out that teenagers around 14-15 years don’t take the rules seriously and will push boundaries as 11-13 year old show may more responsibility.
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Don’t try this at home!
The Netherlands is a safe small country where there are no guns, No poisoness snakes and where within a two miles distance there is always somebody willing to help.
Dutch young adults get more and more in trouble when travelling alone OR in small groups in foreign countries because they are not used to a risky environment. Safe droppings are only possible in a low risk country like the Netherlands.
14
This makes me laugh quite a lot. No, this is not tradition, there are plenty of kids who have never done this, ever. Secondly, it is really not that scary. The Dutch forests are nothing like the UK or the US. They are small and really not that dark and deep at all. And even in the case of getting lost, there is always at least one kid in the group with a phone that can be used if it is really needed. So it's not a horror senario, thrust me.
7
I've been to the Netherlands and the greatest danger is probably being hit by a bicycle. The country is nearly flat and I doubt there is any tough terrain anywhere in the country.
I can understand getting lost in the woods but there are no forests to speak of. Walk in any direction for perhaps a mile and there is a road.
My point? This is not like getting lost in the Northeast Georgia mountains were I live. They filmed Deliverance here.
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It would be interesting to see what would happen if we made a practice of "dropping off" our millennials in the forest at night. The half that did make it back would probably need treatment for PTSD.
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@Robert I love how you people talk about millennials, as if you weren't the ones raising millennials and instilling in them the values they hold.
When I was 11 years old, I didn't ask for a trophy despite being on the worst Little League team in Brooklyn and neither did anyone else on my team. It was the parents and adults (aka Baby Boomers) who insisted that EVERYONE had to get a trophy no matter how bad we were.
Literally every complaint you people have about the millennial generation can be laid at your own feet, because you were the ones who raised us.
8
Having been a Dutch boyscout myself it is a happy surprise to see this article in the New York Times. I experienced many 'droppings' in my boyscout days and they were always the highlight of the year. No better way to teach kids a bit of independence, grit and resilience. Reading this article some of the excitement of 30+ years ago comes back again, haha. Thanks for the trip down memory lane NYT !
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This same game has been played here in the states for generations. It is called Snipe Hunt.
5
Europe generally afford children more independence, but we blinked more than once or twice at the sight of unaccompanied six and seven year-olds on the subway in Berlin heading to school.
3
Belgium too!
2
It is a sign of the times that any GPS could be described as "primitive"!
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This is great.
1
I just watched Lord of the Flies last night, so this article had a bit of an edge to it.
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The greatest gift you as parent can give to your child is not wealth, position or an easy young life. No, for them none of that matters.
What matters is the gift of self assurance you can inculcate by allowing them such independence as they need to develop themselves in preparation for the adulthood. Trust and faith in themselves, in their independence, is the greatest gift you can give.
But let me ask...since this is the Dutch doing this does that mean it's Socialism? (Very Big Grin)
John~
American Net'Zen
9
The thing to realize here is that Holland is a very small and developed country... in any forest if you walk a half hour or so in the same direction, any direction, you'll run into a road or a house. There's no real chance of getting lost. Our forests just aren't that big.
13
@Rudi recently wolves have returned to the Netherlands. It’s serious forest along the German border.
4
In the past we used to call this camping or hiking. There was no philosophy behind it.
I was a teenager in the late 1990's en 2000's in the Seattle area (and before that in France). Even then, not very long ago, I feel as though children had more independence, often by necessity. We would often be out of contact with our parents for hours and hours, sometimes into the night, without them knowing exactly where we were. We walked to school. My parents did a lot for us, but also sometimes insisted we entertain ourselves and get on with our homework ourselves so they could relax without us.
Kids these days are constantly on some sort of (digital) leash. Parents are constantly fretting about something. And parents insisting on having their own time seem to be painted as child abusers.
10
I realize that I had an urban 1950s-60s NYC Dropping Off that went on for many years. Starting at age 10, my mother would drop me off at the 179th E train subway stop in Jamaica Estates, Queens, (neighborhood of Donald Trump) , and I would take the E train to the 7th Avenue subway stop, to my ballet classes in Manhattan, on 54th Street between 6th and 7th Aves. After class I would eat lunch with a friend from my class at Hambuger Heaven, where the burgers were delivered to customers by a model train that ran on a track along the counter, on the corner of 53rd St and 6th Ave, and then go to the Donnell Library on 53rd St between 5th and 6th Avenue, to read until they closed at 5pm.
I would take the F or E train at the 5th Avenue and 53rd St subway stop, back to Queens, alone, totally relaxed, safe, comfortable and happy to have has yet another wonderful Saturday, mostly on my own, in the ever-treasured Manhattan of those days. Manhattan was always the promised land, living in Bayside, Queens. Happily, I moved there when I was 19 and lived there for 30 wonderful years. Then I lived in India for 3 years, after raising a daughter as a working, single parent, and so on. Measured independence in childhood is essential ...in the woods or wilds of a great city.
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Then six-year-old Etan Patz was kidnapped and killed walking two blocks to his bus stop in NYC in 1979, and life for all kids in the US changed. I yearn for our much simpler times. My kid is missing out. If I send her by herself, she’s alone because no one else is allowed to go.
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@Kindred Spirit
Children have always been kidnapped, tragically. The danger has always been known; in the mid 50s I was sent to walk to kindergarten, alone, a trip of 5 or 6 blocks in urban Milwaukee, but was given the sage advice: don't take candy from strangers. The first time I got to school in any way than under my own power was in high school, after we had moved to a suburb.
1
@Kindred Spirit The Lindbergh baby was kidnapped from his home in the 30's ( I think). Kidnapping was not something new in 1979.
When I was growing up in American suburbs in the 1960s, every summer day was a bit like this. We were let loose after breakfast and only expected to come home when we were hungry or hurt, or by dinner time at the latest. In one place, we lived on the edge of a forest that my friends and I frequently rambled in, and in another, we lived on a canyon with crumbling cliffs that we climbed on, dodging rattlesnakes.
This was a normal American suburban childhood back then. Wherever they grew up in the U.S., everyone my age I've talked to was raised in this "free range" way. Many had much more dangerous daily tromping grounds than I did. And I believe it does build resilience, independence, self-confidence and creativity.
We made our own worlds every day when we went out to play, and we conquered them, too.
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My brother and I were regularly tested like this but in a more serious way. Our sisters were presented with different, but equally challenging tasks. Dropped off at ages 8 and 10, we were told to meet my father 3 days later and 37 miles away at a dry camp over scant and rigorous trails, with only the occasional reflector nailed to a tree to verify you were still on the right path.
We carried .22 rifles however because there were wild boar and cougars along the way. Not many believe what my siblings and I went through during childhood, so we rarely speak of it, but they all recognize the fierce independence and strength they see in us, mostly borne out of necessity.
This Dutch version sounds tamer, with character building aspects and snacks. Our version obviously went too far and was a continual process until we eventually escaped into a far gentler world. If someone had mentioned the acronym GPS at the time it would have signified Grateful (for) Personal Survival. Our GPS was a compass.
8
@Yakker: that sounds absolutely awful. Sorry for that, glad that you made it so far in spite of what sounds like pure abuse.
8
Having grown up in Holland and camped with the boys-scouts at age 13 we had a dropping one night. As has been said here before, Holland has many square inches of woods well mapped and are far from very wild, ie wild life etc. I am not sure this would do well in the Adirondacks, Poconos or out West in the US. However, not having had helicopter parents, this is one various rituals/independent experiences I am very glad having had in my adolescent years. Giving ones teenage kids some independence is very important in their future lives.
11
Fascinating. I wonder about the occurance of drug and alcohol addiction in Dutch youth and young adults. I am curious if this practice of Dropping has an influence on dropping out and into substance abuse and the slow degradation of that addiction. On the surface it would appear to boost self-confidence and self-esteem...after the long night.
2
@susan paul , euh well actual none. But don’t forget the culture of the Netherlands is also different than in the US. What work here can work out different in other cultures
2
Well, of course we have a drug problem too. As with sex we try to tell our children what it is all about. Droppings have nothing to do with that. But they are adolescents, and some of them, when given the opportunity, will try to find out what's going on. That's what life is about at that age. Things sometimes go wrong..
In the late sixties and early seventies my siblings and I attended a summer camp in the Catoctin mountains in Maryland. One of the backpacking trips was a dropping -- the mixed-age group was driven blindfolded into Pennsylvania and left with a map. We had to hike back to camp, which took about 3 or 4 days. I have fond memories of arriving in a small town where a Little League baseball game was happening. Our counselor was given a turn at bat while we ate hotdogs in the bleachers. That night we camped out in the middle of the diamond. Another day we pushed our way through a field of tall corn and came out next to a Mennonite family's house. The father said something in German to his son, who went inside and came back out with a box of popsicles for us. One year a group was driven all the way to Washington and left at the Capitol building. These trips were more exciting than hiking the Appalachian trail because we never knew where we'd be sleeping that night and we met interesting people.
9
These sound like wonderful adventures, I’m sure you treasure them now. I wonder do American families still engage in these types of challenges?
I still see youngish kids on the NYC subways. I think most kids would enjoy and relish the freedom.
3
We used to do something similar in England in the 1970s, when I was in the Scouts. Get dropped off 10miles from home at night and have to find our way home (without mobile phones or GPS, of course). Mind you, we were also routinely `armed' with 6inch sheath knives, and taught to use felling axes to chop firewood (how I survived into adulthood with 10 toes amazes me). Can't imagine any of that happening now!
8
This piece made smile for several reasons. First it reminded me of my own childhood here in Belgium where we did the exact same thing. It’s not only in the woods by the way but it could be anywhere remote. Drop the kids in a place they’re not familiar with and let them ‘survive’ on their own. There’s even another version of this where you got dropped and had to get from door to door and try to ‘trade’ whatever you had on you with food or anything people wanted to give you.
The other thing that made me smile is how an outsider perceives and reports this. It’s not as extreme as it sounds (but for a kid it’s huge of course), you don’t exactly get dropped in the Amazon forest or the Ricky Mountains. There’s hardly any dangerous wildlife here.
Also to present it as a typical Dutch practice is not entirely correct. Like i said, it’s common in Belgium and basically any European country where scouts are active.
Anyhow, thanks for a fun article that brought back some nice childhood memories!
11
I think this is more of a scouts thing. In Belgium, through the Ardennes, scout groups do something similar. One can see them everywhere. I am Dutch and never heard about this. Nor my parents. Cool, though. I should make my 12 year old do it.
7
With all this you have to bear in mind Dutch Forests are more like city parks. It is difficult to find a forest in the Netherlands where you can walk for 10 miles without running in to some sort of village or group of houses (or camping site).
Biggest danger are the road crossings and children walking next to those roads.
13
@André van Es Can confirm. There's no forests you can just get lost in and die like in the US.
2
@André van Es
You are right. It would certainly be safer than walking in Amsterdam, and being run over by a cyclist! :-)
1
Could be, overrun by a cyclist. But the change that you are overrun by a mad CEO in a extravagantly large Tesla is as bad, or worse, cars tend to be very solid.
I'm sure Americans will go ballistic over this. I would have loved it myself as a kid and it appears most kids do! Note that there are no bears in the woods, something that the US has in abundance. Forest walking is so much safer in most of Europe.
10
@A. Brown This practice wouldn't work in Washington state. Our forests and wild areas have large black bears, mountain lions, bobcats, rattlesnakes, and really creepy tweakers cooking meth in shacks. But it sounds fun in Europe.
4
Life changes. We hardly live in a rural, foresty setting where pioneer skills will be tested. Yes children need to exercise their decision making skills when young. How about letting them plan family trips, research competitive prices, learn about different places, histories and take the family around. This whole romantic notion of turning back the clock and making Lewis and Clark explorers of our kids seems daft and quite senseless. It has nothing to do with free parenting or helicopter parenting. It has much to do with the skills you gently guide them to for their own successful futures.
4
This brings to mind the Dutch sleepover. In short, older Dutch teens are allowed to have romantic partners spend the night in their room, and the teens do what many teens like to do.
It’s deemed a more natural, safe, and healthy exploration of sex than a situation in which kids are relegated to short time spans of parents running errands, backseats of cars, etc. Rather than shaming teens for having sex, it’s considered a normal part of life.
Safe, minimally-supervised explorations of the thrills and risks of adult independence! And, like life, it’s all coed! What a fun and logical culture.
36
@Human I'm Dutch and my first boyfriend was Texan. In Holland. The contrast between his and my upbringing regarding this was... interesting. Almost started a war between our parents, lol.
7
I currently live in Belgium on the Dutch border- trust me the biggest risk is being in the roads for these kids, not the woods. I did have to laugh and actually read aloud the section concerning the Belgian Scouting incident. For years I have been saying that Belgian scouting is a bunch of kids wandering aimlessly while the teens smoke (never seen them drink beer while wandering aimlessly but you can legally buy/drink beer as from 16 in Belgium).
I have teen cousins visiting in August-planning time off was difficult as it is a last minute trip-my Flemish husband said-the youngest is 14 they can travel on their own- this is the mentality here-kids are more independent. He has since been reminded that the 14 in question is from US suburbia-a great kid but I will not be dropping him in Belgium, the Netherlands or anywhere else unless I find a local be/NL teen going along.
4
At eleven I was hitchhiking through LA. Sometimes I was blocks from the nearest bus stop. I still remember the 'love ins' in Griffith park. Now that was some strange folk. Owls?
4
It's not just about being in the woods. I think that is specifically for scouting. I had several droppings in my childhood and I never went to scouting. I had one from church, several from different ponycamps and from schoolcamps. I loved droppings. I was never popular, but I found out I have a good sense of direction and learned to lead at a young age even when being insecure. Now being a parent myself, I really hope my children get to experience droppings. Even if I would be terrified during the time they're away.
17
Well, I never left my kids in the woods, but the 2 rules were: "when the sun is out, you're out" and "no TV if the next day is a school day." They grew up in Peru, and then in a remote beach town in California, where the kids were out all day. Even young kids went to the beach by themselves, hiked the mountains, basically: disappeared. Home was where you ate and slept. I was only strict about grades, no TV, no gaming devices (this was back in the 80s-early 90s).
My son went to Europe for the summer with an older friend at age 14, and spent the next summer in Peru at 15. My daughter left on her 16th birthday to go to a Grateful Dead show.
What is wrong with parents now? Don't they remember running around freely as children? Trying things they maybe still haven't told their parents?
17
@S Bloom Almeida
Parents today remember growing up and being told, over and over again, "It's not safe the way it used to be". We were told this by our parents and grandparents, by our teachers, by the TV shows and movies we watched.
And when we were growing up it was true. Since then, the crime rate has dropped dramatically, but we all still have that in our minds, that the world WAS safe but it is NOT safe anymore. And even if we know better because we've looked at the statistics (and we live someplace where it's safe to walk or bike around without being hit by a gargantuan SUV), our neighbors are apt to panic and call the cops on us.
5
A wonderful idea. More should do it.
Unfortunately this wasn't the culture where I grew up but we had something similar.
We used to go up into the mountains, only a pack on our back, up to 2 weeks, quite remote, you might see nobody else.
Some of the best times of my life.
I stil regret that there are many areas around where I grew up that I didn't explore in this way.
7
This was a common practice at the girls’ summer camp I attended in the wilderness of northern Ontario from 10-13. It always taught me the value of Plan B, team working, planning and plotting and generally having fun while doing it. We also did tree swinging and swimming in God knows what kinds of swamps. We loved it! It most certainly shaped my character and future career.
4
I experienced a dropping, but it was my kids who dropped me. When they cancelled their trip to France with me I went alone; my first time out of the States and with no language skills. I arrived to a train strike and flooding. Already confused and exhausted, I felt that special panic of being alone and clueless. As I found my way out of “the woods” my confidence level soared and the way I perceived myself was forever changed.
These kids are fortunate to have this experience early on.
31
As a scout in France in the 90s, we had the exact same. And later on (at 15), we had 48hours in groups of two, 30kmto cover on foot, a map, a compass and texts to read and think about. No cellphones back then, no GPS, just an envelope with cash and our leaders' phone number.
For food and board, we had to knock on doors and ask, and proposed services in exchange (chopping wood, clearing brushes...).
I cannot express how these experiences made me grow and learn how to take care of myself and engage positively with my fellow citizens. I really wish my kids can have the opportunity to go through this themselves one day.
Sure there are risk to be acknowledged. But never forget the benefits.
34
Just for clarity: The cash enveloppe was only to be opened in case of dire need.
1
We need to see much more of this in America, period. I can't help laughing at all the criticism about how "cruel" this practice of "dropping" is by the exact same individuals who complain that our society produces kids who cannot get their heads out of their cellphones, worried too much about their social media profiles, etc. I was raised on USMC bases spread throughout the US and overseas, most of them in rural areas or far from major cities. I grew up camping, learning outdoor survival skills and thought nothing of being dropped off in the countryside and left on our own for a day or two at age 13. Such survival training & conditioning came in very handy when years later I served as a USMC officer and had to demonstrate the capacity to think for myself, lead Marines and formulate practical solutions to problems. I've been on hunts (quail, rabbit, deer, elk, etc.) where I camped dozens of miles from even a lone house and had to live off what I could find in the field or carry in my pack. No, I'm not Superman. I'm just someone who learned survival skills outside an urban convenience environment but those skills can be transferred to modern environments when needed. It never ceases to amaze me how many adults have no clue what to do when the amenities of modern life are removed.
33
Had this experience at 17. Learned a lot in a short time. Strongly recommend it.
8
American helicopter parenting would never permit it, nor would authorities (police, social workers, courts), and then there is the problem of liability.
5
In my childhood in various semi-suburban communities in New York State, we didn't need to be dropped. My siblings and our friends disappeared for hours into the nearby woods, built forts, dug for artifacts in 18th century trash dumps, tracked wildlife, and followed creeks to massive cement sewer pipes which we followed to the river, returning home in a state that often horrified my mother. But she never forbade our wandering. My older brother was a skilled Boy Scout. I think she relied upon him to handle most "situations" and he did. In summer, we would be gone all day, coming home only at dusk or when she rang a huge old cow bell to signify dinner was ready. It was heady. We felt invincible. It seems impossible and perhaps irresponsible to give kids this kind of freedom today but I feel so very fortunate to have lived it.
There is something about "dropping" that feels extreme, especially if the kids haven't been out in the wild previously. If they are already scouts, then they should be able to manage and exercise their skills, which gives such a sense of competence. I hope kids today don't lose the chance to experience that.
18
@Kathy Sullivan I forgot to add this was way back in the 1960s! KS
2
I spent much of my childhood and 20s in Holland and have not ever heard of this.
This seems to be an activity related specifically to scouting, not something everyone does with their kids in Holland.
It would be great if the article clarified this. Otherwise, it's misleading.
16
Most people I know did this during camp in the first year in high school (brugklas) I’m pretty certain most 12-year olds do this in The Netherlands, it really is very common. Also outside of scouting.
11
@Enzo Peres
Yep, exactly that! When I went to high school, we had a dropping. And multiple ones during holidays, organized by the camp site I was on with my family
1
@Owen it is very, very common- not just with scouts but with many camping groups -did you go away to camp as a child in NL with Dutch children?
I would have jumped at the chance to try this when I was young. We did smaller sized problems, map-reading to an unknown destination, in daylight, in Boy Scouts. Parkland in California's Bay Area is plentiful, although many close at sunset.
7
My son took two boys rowing in a boat in our marina and a bit beyond. A mom of one freaked out. I said we embrace free range parenting, but I also said I would counsel our kid on parental permission, ppe, etc. Friendship ended, our child ostracized. Our now adult kid--great, theirs? Jury out.
16
@karen -- I think of the things I did as a kid, mostly alone: Taking a rowboat out for hours, nobody around. Wandering through the woods toting a (loaded) rifle as a 10 year old. Taking the subway to downtown Philadelphia for night courses, as a 14 y.o. (in the 60s). Flying to various places with my 16 y.o. pilot friend. I was fine. Now kids sit in front of a screen for hours playing violent computer games.
6
@Stevenz Just found out a week or two ago that my now 74 year old husband went up in a private plane with a high school friend of his and flew "under" a bridge that goes over the 405 freeway in the Santa Monica mountains. Probably during a summer in their college years.
I spent about 3 weeks in Hengelo in the late 1980s, 1990. On a bicycle ride to Germany, the road I was on ran through forest. A car trip to Münster also passed through forests on both sides of the border. The forest in the Netherlands was all the same sort of tree, at regular-ish spacing, and all seeming to be the same age. Clearly a planted forest, not wild land. I doubt there is much wild, level, land anywhere near the Atlantic coast of Europe.
5
@Bill Abbott You’re right. The biggest danger to kids hiking at night is traffic on the roads in darker rural areas.
The article makes it sound like some Spartan community :) The Netherlands are a very dense populated country. If you walk in a straight line for half an hour you will encounter “civilization” and indeed all woods are planted.
1
When I grew up in The Netherlands, we did not have cell phones, nor GPS. We got a map.
The Netherlands are very densely populated. These kids are not dropped of in the wilderness; there is hardly any left there.
28
I was out cycling one day in a very rural part of Holland with my Dutch wife. We were not sure where we were, when my wife suggested we turn off on a dirt path. Recalling experiences in the Maine woods where one might go 20 km down a dirt road, only to find a dead end, I suggested that taking the dirt path was a bad idea. She laughed. In Holland, she said, it's impossible to be more than one kilometer from civilization.
She was right. We took the path. It exited the woods after about one KM and wound down around some fields to a tiny village. So much for being "in the woods".
37
@SpyvsSpy The Netherlands rank 16th on population density in the world and a lot above us on the list are islands or city states like Singapore. It’s actually hard not to run into people :)
1
The article brings back memories of two of my favorite movies, "Cockleshell Heroes" and "The Great Escape."
But, even for children, there seems to be great merit in the practice of "dropping."
3
I remember back when I was attending the University of Arizona, I joined a group outing in the mountains near Prescott where somebody had a big cabin in the woods. Some guys started a marathon poker game, so the rest of us headed out into the woods just to go walking.
We really shouldn't have. We had no map, no compass, or even water, when suddenly we had no idea where we were. There were no cell phones back in those days, so you can't imagine the utter panic that nobody else knew where we were either.
But then as if on cue, we heard the engine of a pickup truck in the distance. It got closer and soon we were able to flag it down. The driver told us where the road was coming from and where it was going, and that was enough to orient us. It turned out we really weren't as far away from the cabin as we thought.
The next day I was glad to be back in Tucson safe and sound. It's not something I fondly remember.
3
@John Bockman -- I had a similar experience in West Virginia when we took a very wrong turn on a long hike. It was a pickup truck then, too. It must always be a pickup truck.
8
This is just dangerous.
3
@R
Maybe in the United States it is. But we have become too regulating of our children. It's rare to see children riding bicycles, or skateboarding on the sidewalks, even in neighborhoods with little traffic. How often do you see children walking to a park to play? Parents regulate their children's every waking hour, with silly things called "play dates", and scheduled activities every afternoon. When do these kids make their own fun?
This world is no more dangerous than it was when I was a child. True, there are some bad people out there, but really there are very few stranger abductions or abuse.
Children don't even play hide and seek outside any more.
There are stories of the parents of grown children even trying to run interference with job interviews.
Children need to learn self-reliance. They need to learn to create their own adventures and their own play. It's how they learn and grow.
50
@R
Keep in mind that it is difficult to find anywhere in Holland that is more than 3 miles from a road. In a small, densely populated country, this is not as crazy as dropping kids in the one of our deserts, rural Montana, or the BWCA, where the hazards are very real. This is nothing more that confidence building with little risk.
3
@R
Maybe in the US where there’s more guns than people and you have actual wilderness to get lost in with bears and cougars (I envy you guys that).
In the Netherlands which is basically a big park and where you can’t buy a gun in every street corner this is just fun and games. And for a kid it really is fun I can tell you :)
7
Unfortunately, this would never work in the US due to high liability risk if any kid got a scrape and the over-policed nature of the modern US surveillance society. In addition, most US communities have low social trust due to cultural incoherence brought on by mass immigration from the non-Western developing world. In the 70s and 80s, kids still had freedom to roam and have adventures on their own in the city and suburbs. No more, as children are glued to screens for the “safety” of themselves and society.
18
low social trust? it goes back much further, do you know the roots of our antion? how about cultural incoherence from colonialist attitudes and a history of white immigrant genocide and the practice of slavery?
38
@W Smith
We don't have nearly as many immigrants as, say, Canada - and yet nobody claims Canada is unsafe due to "low social trust".
3
My kids (now 19 and 22) grew up in Colorado. As a single father, living in the mountains and working 60-80 hours a week... my kids got ‘dropped’ all the time. I’d drive them to a trailhead, tell them to climb a mountain, and then have them make their way home. These excursions frequently lasted 4-6 hours. They always had a backup cell phone and were never on trails too far away from other adults. My daughter graduated Summa Cum Laude from a prestigious university and joined the Peace Corps. My son has a 4.0 at another prestigious university and will undoubtedly be successful. I always lived in fear that ‘child services’ was going to call me, but they never did.... and my kids will readily tell you that their ‘extreme free range’ upbringing made them who they are today; unflappable, resourceful, and excellent problem-solvers.
83
I am Dutch, and never heard of this. Guess city boys from the west are exempt from militia training.
13
@Ben Still there are a lot of scouting groups in the Randstad as well. But it’s less popular in the big cities, I know :)
Doesn't sound too bad to me, at least in the Netherlands. I'm working through permutations on running this interesting rite in the U.S. ;)
1. For children in the well-off suburbs and hip, richer sections of cities: 1) Sign a release form. 2) Hire lawyer who will crush release form if necessary. 3) Track children with GPS and drones. 4) Resupply the kids every half hour with energy bars, bottled water, and new iPhones. 5) If all goes well, use this harrowing experience as part of application to Ivy-League school.
2. For children in ranching country: Pray, pray, pray they don't cross private property lines. Otherwise, all is good! (Except for the bears and such.)
3. For children living along our southern border: Likely to be caught and arrested. Could take some time to be reunited with parents.
4. For children from Brooklyn or Minneapolis or any district led by "The Squad": Expect authorities to show up at your door for child abuse.
;)
22
When I lived in the Netherlands in the 80's, my co-workers decided to take me and the other 'foreigners' on a dropping. No GPS back then, it was just us and our wits. I remember thinking they'd gone easy on us, as we made it back to base pretty easily. But the experience of being blindfolded and driven about, then released, was a novel one and I could imagine the tradition catching on. I guess the closest thing I've participated in here is the snipe hunt that we would take young scouts on.
9
@Markus: Did any of them qualify for the Woodchopping merit badge?
I orienteered for hours on my own as a California (SF Bay Area) teenager in the ‘90s. I wasn’t always great, and sometimes I got lost by a mile or two, but I could read a topo map well enough to get back before anyone worried. I also backpacked with a group in the Pac NW where we each spent one night on our own at least a mile from base camp (no one was told where, we just each picked a spot we liked) and had to return by breakfast. It blows my mind and deeply depresses me that these activities would be considered so foreign now, especially given how much easier phones make things! My husband and I spent 10 days in backcountry Alaska last summer—it was my first time with a Garmin, so I felt we were hardly taking a risk (beyond bears and hypothermia)—but people reacted to us as though we were intrepid or even reckless explorers. Ugh.
11
In retrospect, even in the ‘90s, while my sister and I were out orienteering, one of her friends was forbidden from riding a bicycle between her home in Atherton and Menlo Park because her parents thought it was unsafe. Same for one of my friends in Palo Alto. All parents were recent immigrants and perhaps had a different prior for risk. FWIW, my parents were lawyers with a keen appreciation for torts, but also actively fostered our independence.
I am a professor at an elite private university now and am worried I see the resultant timidity in students I teach. The world is scary, but not for the reasons we often dwell on.
18
@Scientist I think you’re spot on with your observation. Introducing kids to risks (lets call that experiences) with a sound eye for real danger will prepare them for life. Exploring boundaries is a good thing. It learns you when to step over the borders and when to step back occasionally.
Isn’t it basically the same way animals teach their young?
4
Why is it The NY Times loves these, “why can’t the USA be like [insert European country]?” Why not just enjoy the cultural differences between people of different lands?
5
@George I agree on keeping some differences. Otherwise it would be useless to go on holidays :)
But some things are universal I guess, and one of them is teaching your children to get independent and prepare for life wouldn’t you agree?
9
@George Because like many, if not most, self-described liberals and progressives, they want to live in in a "Europe transplanted to North America." They have romantic notions of what life in Europe is like based largely on what they read or (maybe) saw during a summer spent back-packing or a student exchange program in Europe on the parents' dime.
George, I don't know how to respond, really. I am sure a lot of things are better here, in many respects, as many of the readers of the NYT seem to know, So why using this as a vehicle to make the difference.. Come over here and enjoy the friendliness and the ready coming of our society. Lot of things more, but I am going to sleep now...
Never noticed much woods in my 4 months spent in the Netherlands.
How big are these woods? No hills?
8
Not much in the way of hills in the Netherlands, but in the wild east close to the German border there are plenty of large forested areas as well as extensive stretches of heathland. Good sandy trails for biking and hiking, too. Prehistoric remains abound. Well worth a visit.
9
I've been to the Netherlands several times. I've flown over it many times. I didn't know there were forests dense enough and large enough to serve this purpose.
I can't see that as a viable option here in the States.
3
Well, the pictures show a lot of kids on streets, and it sounds like the biggest risk is that kids have been run over, so I’m not sure they’re spending all the time in actual woods.
4
@Jean Auerbach You’re absolutely right. We’re a densely populated country with no natural forest. Kids dropped in rural areas will endure perhaps some uncomfort, but it’s not really dangerous. Indeed apart from the traffic.
7
@Jean Auerbach you are correct. It's not 'into the woods' like in the US. Either way you walk you'll hit a road in 2-3 Km's. It might be 2-3kms in the wrong direction but that's part of the fun. As stated in the article and mentioned by you: most rules are about traffic safety at night. We have hartly any wildlife (literally we have 1(!) Wolf).
1
This is positively delightful!! I grew up surrounded by woods, and from the age of 9 or so was permitted, nay encouraged to spend time there, even alone. Every now and then there would be a child lost in the forest, but that was accepted as just "life", and unless a "stranger kidnapping" was suspected (only happened once in my neck of the woods during my formative years....), nobody worried in the slightest: children can get lost in a shopping mall, lol - it happens, although it was surprisingly rare. Our society today is increasingly dominated by fear and caution, especially when it comes to children. Nobody seems to want to give children a chance to encounter a few dangers or risks, which might make them more able to take care of themselves without adult assistance or surveillance 24/7. A parent who told their child to go out and play with the other kids in the neighbourhood until dinner time, completely unsupervised, might very well end up in jail these days, for "child neglect". We are repeatedly told that we are living in a more dangerous world than those care-free Times of Yore... but this simply isn't true. Take for example the insane "Stranger Danger" campaign of recent decades... sigh. All it does is teach children to fear adults they don't personally know: in all of North America (ok, USA + Canada), there are only about 100 cases of true stranger abduction per year - a number so small as to be negligible. Yet, fear has become our default Way of Life.
17
When I was a Boy Scout in the early 60s (yeah, that long ago), our troop practiced "Survival Trips". Like these Dutch kids, we were blindfolded and then driven out into the woods in pairs and left for two or three days.
The goal of these trips was not to "find our way home" but simply to stay put in the woods for at least 48 hours and "survive". We had no food, but we were each allowed to carry a "survival kit" - the contents of which had to fit into a standard metal Band Aid box (those over 50 will remember those).
In these kits were "mag sticks" for starting camp fires, a string saw for cutting small deadwood, some band aids and salve, water purification tablets, some twine and a space blanket for warmth.
The first task was to build a shelter from scrub branches we cut, bowed and tied together. And yes, it rained and we got wet and cold.
We had to forage for food (mostly berries and roots). On my two trips (a year apart), we hiked a mile to a cornfield and dined on horse corn (after soaking the ears in a local stream for a few hours prior to cooking them in their husks). That was technically stealing, but no more so than what raccoons do.
A Scout leader would come check on us each afternoon. We had no phones, of course. We could have hiked to "civilization" to escape, but no one ever did.
I recall napping one afternoon and waking up to not remembering if it was our second day or third.
Like the Dutch, I still recall these trips as a "rite of passage" into adulthood.
33
@Dave These are experiences that stay with you for life. And I a good way ;)
2
Our Dutch friends say kids are expected to get themselves to and from school by age six. The towns are friendly to walkers and (fast) bikers, but the kids are self-reliant. They also are taught manners, including introducing themselves properly. Having spent many hours with Dutch kids, I can say I don’t remember hearing them whine.
53
@DSwanson Well, I have to invite you over since my daugthers (3 & 5) whine. Just like any other (dutch) kid. :) But I can imagine them walking themselves to school when the youngest is about 6.
6
Where do your Dutch friends live? Not in a big city, I think. Or do they live next door to their school? That said, cities, villages, woods etc. are save places in the Netherlands. Relatively of course, some people here are driving very fast because our prime minister thought and said that that was of vital importance to our economy. By the way, Mr Rutte just visited his good friend Don. Could you ask your president to lock him up?
2
As a scout growing up in NJ, this wasn’t uncommon. I was “dropped” twice during my time at Troop 121 in Chatham, NJ - once while completing Wilderness Survival merit badge at summer camp ind Maryland and once during my initiation into the Order of the Arrow. I consider both experiences to be triumphant and formative moments of my youth and speak of them fondly to this day.
18
Doesn't sound extreme to me at all.
My father did it to us but in daytime.
Night time the area we were in had wolves, coyotes, foxes, ferocious baboons and occasional leopard in the mountains.
But, then it was a different era as well.
It makes you bond together, and the worst and best of any group comes out. You learn, who will stand by you when threatened by something, you learn who cries first, you learn who is the natural leader in a team.
Friend of mine recently tired of his kids dependence on social media, computers and iphones, took them to a sanctuary somewhere in Montana/Wyoming region. He and his wife took away all electronic media from them. Next 4 weeks, they lived in tents, forded through rivers, did horseback riding through "glorious country" (as his teenage son told me later), saw moose, wolves, deer, antelope, a puma and bears. Kids had responsibilities to cook, clean, take care of horses/mules, keep watch at night, etc.
They hunted deer only but with arrows and his Native American friend taught the two older boys how Red-Indians use to kill animals, with due ritual of thanks.
Needless to say, on return, they want to do it again, they've already planned a trek through Scottish highlands. His sons & daughter have taken themselves off social media and restricted their use. One of them, so astounded by constellations and milky-ways which he never saw in a city, he wants to become an astronomer.
We all need to go back to nature, our true home.
104
@Ash. “Red-Indians” is not a term that has been acceptable for decades.
16
@Ash.
Magnificent idea and kudos to all who carried it out in this peculiar era of ever increasing distancing from the natural world into endless bizarre technologies, constant smartphobne dependency, relentless robotification, conspiracy theories and lack of meaningful inter -personal connections. Everyone should have this experience before it is really too late.
4
@Raindrop
This post: "Night time the area we were in had wolves, coyotes, foxes, ferocious baboons and occasional leopard in the mountains." sounds like a 20-line leg-pull. Since when do baboons populate the American West?
11
I can't imagine the children of American millenials even thinking of doing this. They have no idea of adventure or nature. All is their comfortable homes and computer games.
13
@MoonWolf
Oh yes, let’s stereotype all the Millenials.
I know plenty, and they are all avid hikers and adventurers. They camp when taking trips both because of their love of nature and the fact that hotels are expensive.
Great work ethics, willing to work second jobs to make ends meet.
But yes, let’s pretend they’re all the same.
13
I was expected to walk to/from school in the first grade in a town on the Main line in Pennsylvania.
If I had tried that with my millennial children I would have probably been arrested.
5
@Margo
There are accounts of parents who have had their children taken by child protective services for allowing their children to play in a park alone. One man called the police because an eight-year-old asked to pet his dog. The children were taken away for some days.
Which experience is better - riding bikes with friends or having the cops come and force you to be separated from your parents?
We live in strange times.
8
In my opinion, this article, while correct in portraying droppings as a common thing in the Netherlands, makes it sound as if children are left in the middle of nowhere without any adult supervision. This is not what most droppings are like. Most of the times there are adults present who stay with the kids the entire time.
Also, since the Netherlands is a small country the kids are less likely to get lost in the woods since they are rarely far away from places where people live and they would be able to get help. Again, droppings rarely happen without adult supervision, so most of the times the children would not need to resort to being rescued by strangers.
20
Bet the one 'safety' item the Dutch parents would never have thought of is a firearm. But of course, they're in Europe! We, on the other hand, are in the States where we are unsafe in our environs.
7
Good lord, man.
5
Let's put this into perspective. As one who has been to the Netherlands several times, their forests aren't the same as our forests. If you dump a child into a forest in the Northwest you have a better than average chance of having to send a rescue team after them and possibly not finding them in good shape. Adults go for day hikes on good trails and get lost for days. The Netherlands is flat. The forests aren't dense. If you walk long enough you are going to pop out somewhere, most likely on a bike path.
47
@Teddi
Okay, so how about a city? You can wander there just as well. Just pick a city without a numbered grid!
@Teddi The article makes it look like we have some Spartan way of raising our kids. You’re observation of the Netherlands is correct!
1
Exactly what I thought! It is not the same the topography of Netherland than here.
Sounds like fraternity hazing when I was in college. Although I’m pretty sure alcohol was involved.
5
In my neighborhood, the longest distance to the school bus stop is 0.3 mile. Every morning, even in mild weather, I see a long of cars with children as old as high schoolers waiting in the cars until the school bus comes. Even the neighbor who lives next to the school bus stop is in line sometimes. I suppose that a dropping here would involve having the kids walk to the school bus stop by themselves.
47
@ATL ("I suppose that a dropping here would involve having the kids walk to the school bus stop by themselves.")
It might even involve just pulling the minivan out of the garage and having the kids walk to it in the driveway.
That might be enough of a test (for both parent and child) for one day.
One can't be too careful...
7
Although all eight of my great-grandparents came to the U.S. from the Netherlands, I am extremely grateful that my parents never practiced such a cruel act of abuse. They facilitated, and supported, my independence--but on my timetable, when I felt ready.
5
@Lifelong Democrat ...''cruel act of abuse.'' That deserves ridicule. It's better to build a child than repair an adult.
21
@Jeff Ippel Oh, that’s a beautiful way of putting it. I will remember that one!
I don’t think Scouting will embrace it as their motto, but it sure sums up what they’re doing.
1
@Lifelong Democrat
First off, this is not something the kids are forced to do by their parents. Kids join these clubs because they want to, and because they think it's fun. Secondly, it really isn't that dangerous. Here in the Netherlands our forests are so small that you can just walk in one random direction for an hour and end up at a town again.
1
It is true, droppings are fairly common and a beloved tradition for many. To say it is something all Dutch kids experience is exaggerated, tough. For those who think we are heartless people it is maybe good to explain something about our woods: there are no bears, no cougars and no wolves (although a couple from Germany recently settled an had cubs for the first time in 200 years...) the biggest predators one might hope to encounter are foxes and badgers. And our woods are small. In a country as densely populated as the Netherlands a dropping in the woods means encountering villages and roads with street lamps all the time. It is not exactly Blair Witch Project.
And for those who still have doubts: Dutch children are, according to surveys, the most happy in the world. If not because of the droppings, then at least regardless of them.
356
@Bart
You don't have the 2nd Amendment. That, IMO, automatically makes the Netherlands safer than America for kids.
165
@flyfysher The one incident with guns on a school in the Netherlands I can find is a single kid with a small caliber rifle who shot in the ceiling, was then approached by teachers who calmed him down till the police arrived who took him into custody.
We call that “American behavior/circumstances”, but at the same time we realize that’s nowhere near the regular school shootings you have to endure. We feel sorry for that, but then again you’ve brought it upon yourselves as well.
18
@Bart
Well said. Children in the US are quite coddled, and not always to their advantage.
9
Would never happen in the US. There's much less social trust in the US, and everybody is armed. But also, this country doesn't treat children or young adults as adults until a very mature age, usually 21.
7
Speak for yourself please....not everyone in the USA....
1
@Eugene, Maybe it doesn't happen in the US now, but this isn't peculiar to the Dutch. When i was young, it was called a 'Snipe Hunt', where unsuspecting Boy Scouts scouts, or church campers, or just a group of kids in a state campground would take a few of the group of kids out, give them a bag and tell them to wait to catch the snipes in the bags. Of course, the rest of the kids immediately headed back to the campfire and snickered the whole way.
When I was 11, I started traveling to the wilds of midtown Manhattan by myself from eastern Queens, needing to take a bus just to get to the subway. Does that count?
121
@Steve3212a
YES!!!!! Let those Dutch kids try that!
17
@Steve3212a Yes, that counts!
14
Same here. My parents let me take the A-Train from the Rockaways into Manhattan when I was 13. I would spend almost every Sunday visiting museums or hanging out at the Union Square Barnes & Noble until I left for college.
I had to call them (pay phone) before I got on the train, when I arrived, when I left Manhattan and when I arrived at my home station. But, in between the calls, I had an adventure. gg
I wasn't allowed to go to parties or hangout after 8pm, but I was allowed to save my pennies and enjoy Manhattan alone on Sunday afternoons.
15
on our 4 weeks trip to Europe last year - driving around Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, Netherlands - we decided our favourite country was the Netherlands - less stress than Germany, more relaxed and comfortable, and my favourite coffee.
Food shops had the most interesting variety of foods I liked - and the people just seemed to have their heads screwed on the right way - a nice place to be. I want to go back there.
39
My 9 year old recently went canoeing for the first time with his Cub Scout troop. The scout leader put two of them in a canoe after some good safety instruction and some minimal instruction on how to hold a paddle, and he pushed them out into the middle of the lake. And you know what, two 9 year olds figured it out! Amazing what kids can do if pushed into the middle of a lake.
26
Nice story. Out here in LA it would be a great learning experience to drop the kids off in South LA or on Skid Row at 2:00 AM.
12
There are woods in the Netherlands? Who would have thought?
9
No wonder all the Dutch people I know in the US have no plans to return to their homeland.
9
Take it from this Midwestern Eagle Scout from the early 1960s: My adventures in the woods, especially after the sun went down, helped make me who I am. At summer camp, we had to take long walks in the woods, after dark, to get back to our campsite after campfires. New Scouts were terrified and expected to be attacked by bears at any moment. Experienced Scouts laughed at them and were there for them. The honorary Scouting group, the Order of the Arrow, required a solo, all-night vigil in the woods to achieve its highest honor. Our adult leaders organized all sorts of after dark games that were as frightening as they were thrilling. Snipe hunts, midnight obstacle courses, night climbs to a ridge with no flashlights so our eyes would be adjusted to the dark when we arrived for our astronomy lesson. Do you know the constellation Cassiopeia forms a "W" and that the Big Dipper points to the North Star? Ancient sailors did. Many times we pitched our tents in the light of headlights because our adult leaders couldn't drive us to our campsite until after they finished work. I had to laugh at the idea that the Dutch are doing something so revolutionary that it warrants an article in the NY Times. In fact, the Dutch, simply understand how to raise self-reliant, resilient children. In America, helicopter parents and a society afraid of its own shadow is creating generations of namby-pambies who expect life to accommodate them and give them trophies. Sorry, it doesn't work that way.
62
I was raised in Holland from 0 to 22. This thing in the article is not a thing.
5
@Victor Young I believe the kids are mostly scouts. Were you a scout?
2
@Victor Young
6th grade
soccer camp
junior high
social club camp
company camp
sail camp
6 times in 3 years, but maybe i was dreaming?
@Victor Young
Actually it was and still is. They do it at school camps, sportscamps and church camps. and scouting.
I've had them at church camps, growing up in the 80s . I organize camps myself now. we still do it. The smaller children under 12 just play games in the dark in a smaller part of forest. They have to find the adults that make (animal)sounds and collect cards or smuggle cards from to be and avoid the adults that will take on the part of rangers.
Too bad you missed out in those 22 years. It really is a (great) thing.
Even canvassing the neighborhood with other kids and no parental hovering on Halloween was a childhood growth experience back in the 50s and 60s. Long gone, now.
14
Unthinkable to happen here in the US, in a society where the children are gods. Where parents bent backwards to give them the best, the latest, the finest. Where parents are helicopters buzzing around solving every little problem their little treasures might encounter. Where parents scold teachers and principals because they dare to demand discipline and effort. As an elementary teacher, I have seen kids kept stand because there was not a chair in their table and did not know what to do when asked: What can you do about it? How can you solve that?
9
@Aguadejamaica
You don't have chairs for all your students?
I asked my uncle in Belgium and here’s what he said: Nothing scary or dangerous about it. They are not children, but teens. Not abandoned. The woods are not big or wild. No dangerous animals there. This is densely populated Europe,where you walk for ten minutes and hit a road.
34
@Momo - I once went for a walk in a forest in the countryside (a train trip) outside Munich with a local girl
we walked about 20 minutes into the forest on a lovely sunny day, and I was just thinking it would be nice to have a beer or toilet, when we came upon a clearing - where there was a biergarten ! Perfect.
I figured - I come from a country where getting lost in the bush could cost your life - in Germany it might cost you a couple of beers ...
12
In a New England boarding school in the very early 70s, we did something like this as part of a program loosely based on Outward Bound. We were dropped at night with a flashlight, a map and, maybe, a compass and needed to find our way back to campus. I haven't thought about this in years, and I am grateful for the reminder in this wonderful Dutch tradition.
20
@Jack - I did North Carolina Outward Bound and my brother did Colorado Outward Bound! As you said, we were also dropped in teams of three and given a compass and told to "triangulate" to get back to camp. Some of the group loved it - can't say that i did! But it was fun working things out with the others who had been strangers a few day before. Wish American culture could agree on something to get American children off the couches and off their phones.
10
Not really much danger here. Given the tiny size of The Netherlands, after a couple of hours walking, you're bound to walk into the North Sea or another country.
25
My son's scout troop does this regularly in Melbourne; no GPS or phones.
4
It sounds to me like the Dutch have less wilderness and a safer society than we do. I suspect if this was common practice here you would have human predators gathering or kids lost for days in the woods. Outward Bound manages it though so I guess it’s possible here.
7
A rite of passage like a walk-about. Been around for centuries. Dangerous to do in America where everyone and anyone can have a gun. The Dutch have strict gun laws.
27
In Faulkner's novella, "The Bear," the twelve year old main character hangs his compass on a tree branch and goes off into the wilderness alone, after a childhood of guidance by his Native American mentor. He finds his way. But we live in an entirely different era now and the responses here, in 2019, are predictably optimistic. Just teach our children of color to survive the urban wilderness.
12
@SKS
Uh, I don't know about you but Trump has made it ever so clear that to be a child of color in America is to be a lesser person without rights and to be a dark skinned person is be one unworthy of being treated in a civil manner.
I'm not holding my breath for Trump to tell me that I am wrong. Because I happen to be correct.
5
Could we try this with our president to see what happens?
408
@KF2 I’m thinking North Sentinel Island would be a good drop off point...
39
@KF2 He can take his kids with him!
56
@Ward Naviaux
Together with backpack and cheese burgers.
2
As a boy of 10 or 12, my church youth group took frequent weekends at an old farmhouse some ten miles from my SE Texas hometown. We were allowed to roam freely in the dense oak and pecan woods nearby. We played a game called Capture the Flag, in which two teams each hid a bandana somewhere in the woods. The team that managed to find the other team’s flag and return it to the farmhouse first was declared the winner. I’m so much a citizen of the city today that I can hardly believe I ran through that forest in the pitch dark for much of the night, but we had a blast, despite occasional injury from patches of stinging bull nettle and encounters with hidden barbed wire. Good memories.
13
"Only a primitive GPS" sounds kind of funny to one of my age... This sounds like something most Americans could use. Unthinkable here, of course. No wonder our country is on the decline. And the ability to have a cell phone in case of real problems greatly reduces any actual danger involved.
3
Walking in the dark in a Dutch forest and surviving it is challenging not so much because it is dark but many Dutch prisons are into setting prisoners free for several weeks at a time to monitor their overall character to decide if they are ready for reentering a normal life (have they learned not to rape girls any more, do they really not kill a young child any more, do they no longer use an ax to chop off somebodies head, etc.). Being borne and raised in that country the first 25 years of my live, really NYT the most positive comment I can make is that this article is insane.
6
@rudolf
I was born and raised in New York, but moved away decades ago and have learned not to set myself up as an expert on what life is like there. Why? Because just as I have changed over the years, so has the US. Speak of what you know. You obviously don't know the Netherlands (anymore).
This article is not 'insane'. My only criticism is that it doesn't mention that droppings are limited to scout camps and similar activities.
Your assertion that Dutch forests are full of axe murderers and rapists, however, is ignorant and silly.
Of course there is crime here, but due mostly to the strict gun laws the NL is a much safer society than the US -- notwithstanding the milder prison sentences over here.
You seem to have lived long enough in the US to have imbibed their current climate of fear and totally miss the point of this article. So yes: be afraid of criminals and terrorists! Be very afraid! Watch over your kids every minute of every day. Don't worry about them never learning self reliance or perserverance or independence... because you'll always be there to hover over them and make everything all right.
I for one am very glad I raised my kids in the Netherlands. Here they were free to be kids, just like I was in Westchester in the 70's.
As an adult woman in her 40s I walked a few feet from the buddhist monastery where I was staying in the woods upstate New York. I like nature and like going for walks. This was 10AM in the summer. Someone fired a warning shot to let me know that even though I was on a public road and had a right to be where I was, I would and could get shot. I'm black. The area where I was, was not. I wish I could say this was the only time, but it's happened while jogging in Moorhead, Mississippi, on a 'white' street. I have more stories of this kind. So, good for the Dutch kids!
228
@kim
So sorry to hear this.
There are some crazy people in this country, no doubt.
32
@kim a similar thing happened to a white friend of mine while we were staying in a house rental in Greene County (upstate NY) some years ago and he went for a walk. He passed a neighboring farm and the owner emerged with a rifle which he pointed at him while shouting at him to get off his land.
4
@kim
Rural upstate New York doesn't like anyone who looks they came from NYC, much less people of color. This is Trump country. Those of us who can't stand Trump are in a clear minority. That probably doesn't help much with regard to your experience. Having lived in rural areas all my life, I have to say...I'm not at all surprised.
3
What with the Earths resources being depleted, and temperatures rising, we need to start dropping more and more people in the middle of nowhere, to help thin out the herd...
6
Sounds like fun.
8
I did this in the 1970's. Five boy scouts from the upper East side with a paper map and compass up along the Delware River. We had to sleep ruff and find our way back. We loved every minute if it.
10
"Droppings" were frequent during my Syracuse University fraternity Hell Week in the early 60s. We pledges, however, turned the tables on an upper classmen when we took him on a long blindfolded ride into the countryside. It was so dramatic that no one retaliated.
3
I grew up summers camping in the woods. Parents were around but all the kids pretty much roamed around. I hike now, take my son into the woods for vacations...oh the things we have seen.
5
Urban version : I grew up in Chicago in the 1960s and remember spending most summer days outdoors completely unsupervised. With my brother and friends we walked and biked all over Lincoln Park and the Lincoln Park neighborhood, which was far from gentrified at that point. Trick or treating on Halloween was also unsupervised, once we reached the age of 9 or 10. Once in winter the doorbell rang and my mother opened it to find my 11 year old brother who had broken his collarbone while out sledding in the park with his friends and had walked home. My parents were concerned of course, but did not flip out. At the age of 9 or 10, I attended a friend’s birthday party, which consisted of cake and ice cream at her home, followed by a movie at a movie theater. When the time came to go to the movie a cab was hailed and my friend’s brother, who was all of 12, was given money to pay the cab fare and off we kids went. And, yes, crime was worse in those days. Helicopter parenting was unknown, and we were no worse for it.
27
Good for them!
As a kid in Wisconsin, part of the Boy Scout OofA ritual, we were walked off into an obscure part of the camp, blindfolded, and expected to spend the night, and find our way back in the AM.
I don't recall the allowance for a flashlight, or compass, which gave me a little trepidation. However, when I got dropped off, and stumbled onto a wooden pallet, I understood there was a bit of staging to the "ordeal"
I was never serious about scouting, but continue my backpacking (winter and summer) and think the scouting experience panted the seed. It's funny (odd) that my brother, who was way into scouting (camp counsellor and all) is not nearly as outdoor oriented as I am.
These kids seem to enjoy the "dropping", as well they should. Maybe they should abandon the GPS from the start though, and give the opportunity to practice some non-technological navigation skills.
8
You might be arrested for doing this in the US..
11
The Netherlands is one of the safest places in the world to give children this opportunity to grow.
No lions, no tigers and the only bears in the woods are at “Berenbos” (Bear Forest) in the zoo in Rhenen.
There are foxes, badgers, stoats, weasels, polecats and 14 European wildcats.
Safer than my neighborhood.
6
If this was done In The USA, the snobby Europeans and local europhiles would denounce it as typical American lack of oversight for their children.
6
No.
21
@Jonny, why the hate dude?
17
@Jonny — there are europhiles in the Bronx? Who knew?
4
Of course, in the US, if a lost kid knocks on a door or accidently stumbles into the wrong yard he or she might get shot. Especially if he or she is not white looking.
239
True, I was shot at when I crossed a farmer’s pear orchard when I was a kid in Oregon. And chased through the woods by a male stranger who did not mean well.
12
@BNYgal
How's that victim mentality working out for you?
I came home the other day and found a "not white looking" teenage girl sitting on the sidewalk and crying?
I did not shoot her.
I asked if she was ok and if she needed help. She said she was fine. I talked to my neighbors who had noticed her as well. None of them shot her.
We figured it was some sort of boyfriend trouble. She sent more texts and then went on her way.
If you must insist on being miserable and pessimistic, please keep it to yourself. The rest of us are busy looking out for and caring for our neighbors.
Have a better tomorrow.
9
@Third.Coast Good for you. There’s too many other examples of the opposite, though. As I went for a run early one morning while visiting in a “stand your ground” state, I saw that all the houses in the development were identical. I had to take pictures of the house and cross streets to make sure I didn’t make an error and accidentally approach the wrong one. I’m sure some people think that’s fine. I think it is uncivilized and a symptom of a sick society.
9
Kids who go through NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) or Outward Bound learn the skills to be able to do (I think a three day version of this) by themselves. Seems to have served my sons (now in their 50s) well.
7
This is not new. It used to happen often and probably still does in more rural areas. Colleges did it to pledge people and it has echos of snipe hunting. It just sounds strange to some people because they've forgotten we live in a world where some people understand nature.
7
@Risa - *grin* The first thing that came to mind when I saw the title was this seems a lot like snipe hunting . . . The difference is, where I grew up, it was just a part of summertime fun . . . a snipe hunt would be organized whenever a mark was identified . . . nothing formal or official . . .
3
I think these activities are very helpful. On my first overseas business trip, back in the 1980’s, I had to fly to Japan, make my way to Shinagawa Station, and then a variety of other stations and addresses for various meetings. There weren’t too many English signs at the time, and walking into the subway station could be terrifying. I recounted the Orienteering and Wilderness Survival classes I took in Boy Scouts, and the all-Japanese subway map came into focus and made sense.
13
The column and responses are designed to bring about the predictable discussion of "the sky is falling...American kids know nothing.." and it gets tiresome.
My kids have grown up in cities/metro areas and have still found ways to spend time outdoors - daily mile long walks to/from school, exploring wooded "forests" sans adults, girl scout camping, portaging canoes and sleeping under the stars, lake swimming, sleepaway camps, fishing etc.
Were they dropped in the woods and told to find their own way home? No. Do they have relationship with the outdoors? Yes.
13
I encountered a group of summer campers, possibly even just weekend summer campers from city, doing this same thing right here in NY this summer. They were slightly older, but definitely no older than 13-14. About 5-6 of them, left to find their way back in trails for about 3 miles. No one was blind folded and dropped off by a van in the middle of the night, but they were left in the middle of the woods and expected to find their way home. They had a map, and basic GPS. They mostly figured it out. There was a camp leader about 300 ft away sort of tracking them though, who they were oblivious of.
8
I was a girl scout in the Netherlands and learned useful skills like how to use a compass. Similar skills and programs are here in the USA. Nothing new under the sun. Teach the kids some self reliance.
11
It is difficult to imagine dropping children into the vast, remote, forbidding wilderness of the rural Netherlands to fend for themselves.
8
It’s all fun and games when you’re not in grizzly and mountain lion country.
14
@Lisa, My son and I have "ran" into a bear. His head was buried in huckleberry bushes (Glacier National Park). We "ran" into a cougar on a hike on the Olympic Peninsula. Pretty scary but we still go, now with bear spray.
You are 100% right, Grizzlies and cougar country makes it a bit scary.
4
Our inaction on climate change amounts to an unwitting "dropping" of the planet's children into a wilderness from which there may be no return. Perhaps the least we can do is help them practice for it.
11
I’m Dutch and this article reminded me of my droppings. They made me feel good at the time and thinking back after reading this, it has a similar effect on me. 50 years ago we didn’t have GPS of course. We had a compass and a mental picture of the geography. Even today this skill helps me navigate when in the car. Waze has spoiled all that of course!
21
Sounds like a khas-won.
2
As a dutch girlscout, I did this when I was 9 or 10 pre gps and mobile. Just a rudimentary map on paper and a compass. Also, juice boxes and a bag of chips.
1. There are no bears or anything life threatening in the dutch woods. Although recently the first wolf family has been spotted.
2. It is hard to get really lost in the dutch woods. There are roads and bicycle paths everywhere, with signs to put you on the right track.
I would not allow my daughter to do this in Sweden, where I live now. Maybe when she is 15 or older and knows to avoid a moose.
The most scary is your own imagination. We encountered a dead cow in the side of the road, waiting for pickup by destruction in the early hours, that made us girls scream so loud the farmer woke up. All by all I thought we were back way too fast, it was lovely to walk in the warm summer night.
21
At Scout Camp in my early teens with out Troop, our patrol would leave camp regularly for the day, hiking along old abandoned rail road tracks to a state park 10 miles away, to a waterfalls, and to an old ore pit now filled with water (bottomless as soon as you entered). We developed self-reliance and independence.
My own sons were lucky enough to be part of a 'High Adventure' troop that regularly hiked under all conditions - well over 50 miles at Philmont, Desert Isle at Sea Base and more. Parents were there for support but boys ran things.
My youngest has continued his love of the outdoors, climbing at an advanced level all over the US and England and caving in both places as well.
Scouts can be a great program - depending on the local volunteer leaders. Paid staff often falls far short of what they should be. I personally have issues with BSA as an organization (as did many of those in our Troop - it has become something very different from what it had been in my youth) but we kept our distance from paid staff and ran a great program. As that group of involved parents leaves they are replaced with less involved people who are unable or unwilling to do as much.
It seems that the US has a dichotomy - parents who are far TOO involved in their children's lives and those who remain oblivious to their children's lives. A balance - not easy to find - is needed.
15
I kind of did this to myself when I was a kid. I often left the house after everyone was asleep and wandered about on country roads and in the woods and fields. It was scary, but definitely made me more independent. On the other hand, I never, ever would have permitted my kids to do this. And what my parents would have said, had they known, I will never know!
13
My father lived in the Netherlands for 30 years; the people are a little bit crazy.
But also super nice, very friendly and always full of entertainment
10
@Chicago Paul
My favorite is the absolute privacy in bathrooms. The doors in public stalls must go to the floor. Plus the doors in home restrooms MUST have a lock.
The daughter of hubby's Dutch cousin freaked when a bathroom door did not have a lock when she visited her American cousins. Um, yeah. The gorgeous mahogany doors were salvaged from a hotel that had to make theirs ADA compliant. We even got brass knobs and keyholes the salvage company. If we wanted a key we had to rummage through a basket of keys. Um, nope!
We sent her to the basement bathroom which did have a lock. Along with a laundry sink (okay a lovely Kohler cast iron sink with a wooden stand used for fabric dying) and a beaded curtain entry to the furnace/water heater room (the city had ventilation requirements).
Her American cousins had no problem with it. Apparently they learned to respect privacy.
Ask any U.S. boy scout who's being initiated into the Order of the Arrow- they do the same thing in the United States. It's not just a Dutch thing. The night I knew my kid was being dropped off to create his own shelter, find his own food, and navigate the woods on his own was a long one, but he did it and he's a better person for it. It encouraged him to reach his Eagle Scout rank, which has helped him in many ways. These are necessary skills to have, especially since climate change is decimating the planet in 12 years...
38
You'll never convince me these types of stories are covered by the Times as click-bait. The responses are utterly predictable. Those of a 'certain age' reminisce and glorify their childhood when 'men were men' blah, blah, blah and the rest simply heap on condemnation. If we're learned anything in the modern political era it is not allowing oneself to be easily manipulated.
4
As an adult, I've been lost in the woods at night. It was not wilderness and there were roads and habitation in every direction. But it was terrifying. Something primeval kicks in.
7
@Paul
Paul...maybe if you would have experienced it as a kid, you would have been fine as an adult.
That is what "raising" kids is all about.
1
It's articles like these that make it abundantly clear that the NYT is written by, well New Yorkers. "A primitive GPS", is an oxymoron. Any system that relies on a constellation of satellites orbiting the earth, which makes complex mathematical calculations to compensate for the vagaries of beaming a signal through the atmosphere can't really be described as primitive. Oh, almost forgot the palm sized receiver that interprets the satellite data on an internal microchip.
Navigating by the stars is primitive. Navigating by compass is primitive. If you think GPS navigation belongs in that group you need to head to Starbuck's for a macchiato to wake yourself up.
417
@Ted - Primitive GPS = monochrome LCD screen and four AA batteries, with no cellular connection. Gasp!
29
@Ted
Dropping with a compass would have been sporting. A backpacking store ran navigation classes that I joined as a teenager. I learned to navigate with a compass and topo maps.
20
And also look at the image where one of these „primitive GPS“ is depicted (in yellow). It is a Garmin device! No matter what exact model it is: It‘s definitely not primitive but top-notch rather.
22
This happened to me as part of my Waldorf school’s celestial navigation course in a forest near a retreat center in New England. No blindfolds since none of knew where we were anyway. All they gave us were water bottles, one compass, one watch, and one topo map per group of students. The terrain was relatively flat and heavily wooded, but we were able to cross reference land features with time of day, celestial features, and use the compass pick a direction of travel. My group made it back first because we ran whenever we could. It would have been much harder in bad weather with cloud cover.
8
Character building and kind of quirky.
5
Fabulous. Both of my daughters went to wilderness camps that ran programs along these lines. Although they are young professional women now who are quite different from each other, and are in totally separate professions, they each credit the programs for much of their independence and resilience. My wife still thinks the idea was and is lunacy bordering on child abuse.
5
GPS is cheating. Give the kids a map and a compass so they can learn to navigate for real.
10
I remember being taken out to the middle of the woods blindfolded in Boy Scouts and expected to get back to camp without a map, compass, or GPS in the dead of night. Is that not a thing in the USA anymore? I was in Boy Scouts in Texas during the 1970's. I recall a rain soaked weekend with no water or food of any kind. We were expected to live off the land for 3 days and nights with only a flashlight, fishing line, and a pocket knife. It was miserable, but no one died. We learned to figure it out.
9
@JB my 12 yo Tenderfoot just earned his Orienteering Merit Badge up at Royaneh - no GPS - just compass, stars, landmarks, & map - he saw this article and thought it was the most awesome idea ever- but I don't think Netherlands have mountain lions, bears,& wild boar running around - although to be honest I would be more concerned about him coming across an illegal grow or meth lab.....
13
Ha,
Sometimes I’d like to drop my kids off in Lagos, Nigeria and see if they can hustle themselves back to New York City.
30
"Children are taught not to depend too much on adults". My, what a novel concept!
11
This was nothing new to the Boy Scouts at Camp Sequassen in CT back in the 1950's -- but it was called a 'Snipe Hunt," not a dropping. It was an accepted part of your week at camp.
9
Sounds like a rite of passage whose roots go way back.
4
@theresa
I sincerely doubt that. I asked my husband if he had heard of it, and he had not. His father grew up in the Netherlands and spent part of his high school years living in a farm during WW II. He would bicycle into town to smuggle in food during the occupation.
I think the "dropping" is something that was created by the "Greatest Generation" to toughen up their kids. Hubby knew none of this because his dad emigrated to Canada in the late 1940's because he could not get a job.
In Boy Scouts in Indiana this was called a “Snipe Hunt”.
9
Somewhat reminds me of snipe hunting after dark where you were taken out in the woods with a bag to supposedly catch snipes (a real bird) but were really abandoned to find your way back to camp. I also spent my childhood playing in the woods and pedaling my bike miles from home and survived.
15
@Dr D
{NOT} a real bird.
2
@cheryl
Absolutely a real bird. Google it.
2
@cheryl
Definitely a real bird, but they a "wading bird" that live near water, like marshes. The only way to find them was to get your feet very wet.
My Boy Scout Troop in NC used to do a variation on this - eight boys age 11 to 15 would be dropped in woods with a compass bearing and flashlights. We’d make our way a mile or so to a checkpoint where we’d get another bearing. And so on. Great experience. Not quite like the Dutch . . .
6
I grew up on Capitol Hill in the 60's. D.C. was a rough town in those days, not the gentrified place of today. Seven, eight years old, my best friend (who later became an intrepid reporter who unfortunately died covering the Iraq war) and I would go "exploring." We knew every tunnel and passage way around the Capitol, Library of Congress and Senate building. Playing hide and seek in and around the Supreme Court, I once actually hid in the empty courtroom, realizing, hmm, maybe I should be in here. We explored and climbed the monuments of Lincoln and Jefferson, and crossed the bridge to Arlington Cemetery. We got around but always eventually showed up back home for dinner. Kids know how to navigate if given the chance. Today, I have an excellent sense of direction and a thirst to keep exploring, finding my way around places like Tokyo and Europe using just a map. I think this is great that the Dutch do this. The kids are having fun, building confidence and that will stay with them a lifetime.
67
With, "just primitive GPS".
Uh,,, I know of nothing primitive about GPS. Try it with a compass. Or more accurate and actually easier to do is at night ,telling time and navigation by the stars. I can agree with, and understand to experience, and the lifelong feeling of accomplishment. And yes, easily,, the commander of each small team may well be the 12 year old, not the 15 year old. Great leaders are without regard to age. It would be life formative.
I went on my first solo canoe portage trip through the wilderness at the same age,, mine was 3 plus days, about 45 miles, trails (primitive), canoe and compass and chart.
10
With the possible exception of trying to keep the kids off roads, I can see nothing but positives here. I am shocked at the level of parental hovering and over-scheduling of everything that goes on for kids these days. It seems that so many of them don’t have the opportunity to just be kids. And, of course, the devices. (Back in those ‘good old days’ TV was forbidden through the week. I didn’t miss much.) We are growing a bunch of screen-addicted couch potatoes.
I had the very good fortune to grow up in the 60’s/70’s in the Midwest countryside. I spent hours on my horse with the only admonition being not to jump him alone. Sometimes my horse came home before me;) My mom would wait to see if I limped up the drive way in the next 10 or 15 minutes, if not, and my dad was home, she’d send him out to look for me. It was idyllic, and I learned to make decisions on my own, and importantly, to also be comfortable with my own company.
26
According to the book 'Lyme' by Mary Beth Pfeiffer, the famous ticks are abundant in the Netherlands. These kids are probably getting thoroughly inspected after their adventure.
4
My Brothers and I (and all the kids in our neighborhood) grew up playing the Woods in Westchester, New York. It was our playground. Many times we would get lost and sometimes need a ride home when popping out of the Woods on an unfamiliar road. Sometimes you would see adults in the Woods and it was common to see animals from Deer to Stray Dogs. We thought of ourselves as Rangers or Indian Scouts. We would track Deer, play large games of "Capture the Flag", battle each other with our invisible Bows, climb trees, and use our imagination every day, every adventure, in Summer and Winter. We could handle anything, until Mom called us in for Dinner.
26
I did two tours with the Boy Scouts, one for me (Eagle) and one as a scoutmaster for my son's troop (also an Eagle). His troop was very active, including one to two backpacking weekends a month in the Arizona mountains. When I accompanied the troop on these weekends, he largely ignored me because he was having too much fun. On those weekends when I didn't go, when he returned home covered in mud, food and blood, and grinning from ear-to-ear, I knew he had a great time! These experiences served him well. Now 30, he has become one of the most innovative minds I have met, which serves him well as a published molecular biologist. He continues to be an active outdoorsman and thinks nothing of taking off on a solo three-day hike through the Superstition Mountains. His only complaint is that the beer in his pack weighs too much.
29
Growing up in Flanders, Belgium, we looked forward to finally being old enough (around 12) to go on droppings during summer camps with our youth group. It usually happened towards the end of the camp when we had become familiar with the surrounding woods through the many games and hikes. We had a compass, no phone. The darkness was scary and exciting, and not a hint of Lord of the flies. Thinking about it now, the young leaders did an amazing job preparing us.
48
I just got back from hiking the Long Trail in Vermont, a 272 mile hike. Along the way I met a brother and sister team, she is 18 and he is 16. I was so glad to see some parents allow their kids to be self reliant, have adventures, and challenge themselves.
78
@KS
The Long Trail in Vermont is the first of its kind in the U.S. and was the inspiration for the Appalachian Trail (actually part of the Appalachian trail in Vermont runs along the Long Trail.
Vermont is a safe sort of Wilderness. But the safest place is Isle Royale National Park in Lake Michigan. It is considered the #1 place in North America for women hiking alone. As an island the park is not accessible to the random crazies that have attacked people occasionally (rarely of course) in other parks.
1
One of my friends growing up came from a Dutch family. In college, I would go hiking with him and one time he told me his parents had put him and his sister (then in their early teens) by themselves in the woods to camp overnight and then find their way back to the trailhead. This was in the era of no cell phones. They weren't totally unprepared though: the family had been hiking and camping since they were children and my friend knew how to read a map, use a compass, light a fire, etc. He thought it was a great experience and they did not at all feel afraid. I did not know this was a common Dutch tradition.
On my side, I grew up in the city but my brother and I were taking a bus on our own cross town as starting at 7 or 8. This was in the 80s.
A lot depends on assessing how mature the child is and preparing them ahead of time.
17
My father was a navigator and I fancied being a chip off the old block. I used to get him to drop me off, blindfolded while in the car, to a place of his choosing. It had to be in a remote area.
I always got back with the help of an ordnance survey map (this was in England) and a compass. No GPS in those days.
I guess it's fine to practise "dropping" in Holland because it's such a safe country. I don't think it should spead to Syria or places like that.
10
For what purpose did the author of this article describe one 11-year old boy's ears?
17
When college fraternities do this to 17 and 18 year olds it is called hazing and is illegal in the US. Dont romanticize dropping kids off in the woods just because it’s Dutch.
2
@Nicholas Namias "dropping" sounds like a very healthy exercise in self-reliance and common sense. Practised early, it teaches kids to be confident in their own decisions, to appreciate nature and to be open to other people while fine-tuning their instincts if something seems awry.
My friend, who has just recently moved to Vermont with her family from Massachusetts, allows her children, especially her eldest who is not yet in High School, a good degree of independence and allows him to take long hikes on mountain trails by himself.
Coddling, on the other hand is counterproductive and produces adults who continuously want to be spoon-fed by others around them. In the US and many other countries, parents coddle and then expect their kids to be self-reliant. This is a recipe for epic failure.
No one is romanticising this. Because it's Dutch or otherwise. It is practical training and seems to be done in a constructive way, unlike what I know of the practises of fraternities.
Ever heard of Eagle Scouts?
18
@Nicholas Namias Obviously the Dutch prepare their kids before the dropping, it's not at all like the nonsense American college kids do to each other. The hazings American college kids do SHOULD be illegal because these college kids can't be relied upon to take care of each other
10
@Nicholas Namias
Perhaps, but nothing like forcing someone to drink enough alcohol to kill themselves.
11
The Netherlands is flat. The residents are much more likely than Americans to share a common culture.
Ordinary people in The Netherlands do not have mass killing weapons like Americans have automatic guns.
The United States contains much larger natural areas.
I think US citizens are increasingly non-athletic, dependent drones who apparently can't think much for themselves. But it's hard to make comparisons between 12 year old children because the two countries have so many differences.
The best Boy Scout troops in America probide experiences for boys which are very similar to boys. Eagle Scouts have to find their ways back to camp without coats, food, etc. - just with compasses - at least that's what my son did. He survived.
Dealing with hardship and irrationality can be learned in many different ways. The Dutch have devised one which works for them.
21
The Netherlands is one place, but let's try dropping them in the middle of Death Valley in summer and see what happens!
6
@Tom Nobody suggests dropping them off in environments of extreme weather. Same could be said of dropping them off in the Sahara, Gobi, or north of the Artic Circle. Seems like they have more common sense than that. But if it happened in the U.S. there would be an outcry of child abuse.
7
@Tom,
Hey, they're kids, not the Special Forces!
1
@DC Exactly my point. The USA is not the Netherlands, where climactic and geographical risks are exceptionally low and a "forest" is no more than a glorified Central Park.
As for 'dropping,' this seems to be a variation of an exercise I experienced as a Boy Scout in Michigan. Hardly Dutch...
Thank you for this informative piece. We can all learn to be self-sufficient by, well, being "forced" into self-sufficiency through customary trials. Many ethnic groups around the world, for millennia, required "finding one's way" as a passage to adulthood.
There was a long period in the history of humankind where adolescence did not exist in its "rebellious teen" stage; when 10 or 12, the milk cows became one's adult responsibility; the spinning wheel was the first step to making clothes for one's younger brother. Children became adults at 13 when they finished 7th or 8th grade---maybe even before that. If a 10 year old could handle a horse, he/she could use a plow........
If a road existed between the farmstead and the nearest school, the child did not get lost while walking to school.
My, times have changed....and parents give the latest electronic communications devices, the latest model cooool car to their children who have no clue what "being responsible" means. Yes, it is irresponsible to text and drive; it is irresponsible to play internet games during your grandmother's Thanksgiving dinner; it is sad when 12 year olds act like children, and sadder still when 22 yr olds act as 12s.
12
@ultimateliberal
This myth that adolescence is modern is just that - a myth. For all the vaunted "teens had real jobs!" commentary, any glance at old journals show that adolescents in teh 1600s were just like adolescents today. They got into fights, they committed petty theft, they slept around if they could get away with it, they ran away from home and from their employers, they slept in when they could, they got drunk.
It sounds alot more fun than 'stop and release' that teens of color had to endure.
8
This report is highly inaccurate. I live in the Netherlands and can state from experience that a dropping is by no means a "normal part of Dutch childhood", being limited to children who participate in the scouts, a (small) minority of Dutch children. To present this as a feature of 'Dutch life' rather than of 'Dutch scouting life' is simply incorrect.
48
Many Dutch people I’ve met over the years appear to have been dropped at some point in their childhood. I’m glad you were spared.
2
@Hugo K
I'm also Dutch, and completely agree with you.
2
I am Dutch too and I disagree.
Drooping at summer camp and in college.
6
Can you imagine the rich, entitled, overly controlling, ridiculously doting and obnoxious NYC parent doing anything remotely like this?
8
@Theo
You know, there are millions of NYC parents. Most of us aren't rich, nor any of those other things.
In summer in NL it’s still light at 10:30 or more....starts getting light six hours later. There are boars in the woods and quite small deer.
3
Our Boy Scout adventures were not quite that bold, but later, in my 20’s, I “dropped” myself into situations where I had to use my wits, make do, and survive. I camped in rural Missouri alone for three days (after “Deliverance”), hiked the White Mountains alone for a week while experimenting with fasting, then travelled through France for three months. I learned a lot about self reliance. I also realize now how lucky I was not to encounter people who wished me harm. Not sure I’d do it again these days in America.
12
@Rob Merrill
There are so many responses dissing America! I wonder if America really is more dangerous than other similar countries such as Canada.
Just today, there is a sad article about a young couple, an American woman and an Australian man, who were apparently killed when their vehicle broke down on a highway in northern British Columbia - in Canada! Many Americans are ignorant, insular, poorly educated, and gun-toting mental cases. But I am not convinced that we have that many more evil, ignorant people than every other "civilized" country in the world!
2
It's a bit wilder in the colonies--bears, nocturnal poisonous snakes, 100,000-acre wilderneses, but it might be a good idea. Or we could do mandatory national service, like most countries do. Problem: most kids refuse to go where there is no WiFi.
10
Couldn’t orienteering by daylight have the same effect? The middle of the night phenomenon seems a bit like Scout Hazing.
8
In Holland, parents publicly allow their children to independently engage in a challenging and stressful, but successful, personally rewarding character-building ritual. In America, parents underhandedly get their children into prestigious colleges and universities by engaging in corrupt, felonious activities which sometimes also criminally implicates them. American exceptionalism.
19
@John Grillo
Not all of us do that.
3
@John Grillo
Yes, let's take a small number of individuals involved in a sting and extrapolate that to the rest of the American population.
3
It would be a heck of a lot safer if they could find a way to keep the poor kids off the road in the middle of the night. I understand that the point of the exercise is independence, but surely there's a better way to achieve this than trudging along a paved roads for hours on end? What's that got to do with being in the woods, anyway? A century or two ago it might have been a great idea - now, not so much.
5
Crime, by every metric is way down here in the US, but people seem more scared than ever. In the mid 1980s, our cross-country coaches used to drop our whole team off, seniors through freshmen, up in the foothills above our school with two rules: 1. Run the whole way back. 2. Stay together. Sure, we'd get a little lost, and yes, there was some light hazing, but teamwork and problem solving are great skills to gain and hone in non-pressure situations. I suppose fear is an innate trait of human nature, it's just too bad people aren't celebrating society's safety gains by allowing their children to have fun, exciting, safe adventures.
15
The Netherlands is a very small country. It has a fairly dense population so one is never very far from help. Also, free-range parenting is in vogue. In the US parents would be arrested for dropping their children anywhere. Kids in the US can't even walk to school or a park by themselves without some busybody reporting them. I grew up traveling on a train from the suburbs to a city to go shopping or to go to concerts at night. Now, American kids can't even go off to college by themselves. We need something in the US to teach our kids independence. Dropping may seem drastic but Dutch kids survive the ordeal and learn how to figure out problems for themselves. Dropping kids in daylight to go across town would be a challenge.
20
The Woods? In Holland? Lotta bears?
But the thing that would really keep you from doing this is the U.S.A. would not be the bears, but the lawyers.
230
The major differences between a bear and a lawyer is that the bear might let you out of its clutches, and wouldn’t charge you several hundred an hour for the experience.
6
If only our Scouts were as bold. Now the BSA has to worry about lawyers, the ADA, helicopter parents, sexual orientation , blah blah blah.
The only thing close to this is The Order of The Arrow initiation. Scouts can not talk for two days, and sleep at a drop off somewhere in the woods.. Another Scout has to watch them, you know lawyers, etc.
4
Ahh, lawyers. There are so many jokes, but this is my fave:
Why don't sharks attack lawyers?
Professional courtesy.
13
Wow. Sounds fantastic.
But, wouldn't this be considered a 'white' cultural experience and thus worthy of ridicule if not out right censure?!
8
Summer? No one dies of hypothermia in Dutchland in the summer. Tell me they do it February and I'll give them some respect.
4
In America, we drop kids off at the front door of Chick-fil-A to see if they can find where to order.
45
Wonderful that at least one country lets kids be kids. US parents (and kids) have so much to learn from others. Sadly, learning from others is not the American way.
14
Rather different from the present American approach to growing up, where trigger warnings and safe spaces are considered a necessity of life.
I worry a bit about the Dutch approach, and assume there are sufficient rules, which are followed, to ensure safety. There can be real dangers in the woods at night. But if this is done, perhaps the Dutch approach has something to be said for it.
3
There are many more things to worry about in the city than in the woods. As you note for safety sake correct monitoring is needed but with it the kids should be fine. Kids need to learn (literal and figurative) self-direction.
5
Moved around overseas a lot with one of my parents in the diplomatic corps and one of the schools I attended in northern Europe did this when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade. I remember being scared out of my mind (the adults did hide in the bushes and make noises). Our goal was to get through the woods to the beach based on the sound of the waves, I think. I’m proud to say I did not soil my pants. I also remember the incredible rush of adrenaline and the subsequent high upon reaching the beach.
65
It was a tradition for the boys and girls of every 6th grade class at my elementary school to go to camp for a week, which included a day--not a night--of being "dropped" in the woods. We were expected to understand how to use a compass, build a shelter and start a safe campfire for warmth in the wilderness with only what nature provided. It rained all day, and it was impossible to start the fire, but we built a good shelter and learned an even better lesson about teamwork and what it takes to be out in the wilderness on our own.
25
I did several of these as a Dutch scout back in the 1970's using a compass rather than GPS. I recall the anxiety, but also the excitement of working as a team in getting our bearings and relying on each other for physical and emotional support. I fondly remember the sense of accomplishment upon returning to camp, where (as in the article) a fire and food would be waiting. These experiences have served me well to this day in navigating unfamiliar surroundings and never really feeling lost. More importantly, it taught me together we can do things that may seem daunting if not impossible to an individual.
192
@Mark you gave me the best chuckle!
1
I just summarized this article for my 10-year-old. He’s ready to get on a plane right now. I’d be willing to bet pre-teens do better before puberty has a chance to scramble their brains.
55
Can't help but think of Netflix's Belgian series "Black Spot".
3
@WWW
And I can't help thinking how your comment referencing a TV show you saw is so antithetical what the article is about!
4
@Common Sense, sorry Common Sense - it's just what came to mind. I've spent plenty of time in the woods and had a very free childhood growing up in New York. Mea culpa.
6
I think it's a great idea but as the world changes the kids need to be watched at a distance, maybe secretly. I, like many other children of the 60's remember with great pleasure our ability to go anywhere alone on our bikes as long as we got home on time. It looks like the Netherlands are still in this honeymoon stage of relative personal safety but it will not last. Meanwhile here in the states the kids are never left to themselves! My daughter in law won't even let her kids use super soft Nerf balls to throw at each other. I bet schools don't even play dodge ball anymore, wait, I bet schools don't even allow play anymore!
10
@C. Bernard
Not sure dodge ball is a loss … I remember it being very stressful.
5
@C. Bernard: I'm pretty sure that it can be shown that the past, statistically, was more dangerous than the present as far as the dangers you refer to are concerned. What has changed is awareness, but also the prevalence of fear as the defining American emotion (fueled by politicians and 24-hour media, for example).
I enjoyed my free-range childhood (in the US), too, and think on the whole it was a very good thing.
Love this. Danger isn't necessarily dangerous.
17
I'm 52, and I went through the same as a kid because of my Cherokee grandmother. I'm the last of my family that will ever experience this. Shame.
55
@Xavier Compared to the Dutch tradition your read in this article, you probably got the masterclass version of this experience. Although dropping is really exciting and fun for the kids. I think this would be a complete different game in the U.S. The nature in the U.S. seems so incredibly more extreme than the Dutch, ours is not that breath taking astonishing rough. I think a forest here is like a park from your point of view. There are not any wild dangerous animals. We are not allowed to wander off the tracks most of the time, the forester would not allow this. There is civilization within a mile. There are paths everywhere and when found a way back they would walk on the sidewalk or bike lane when possible.
4
Kudos to the Dutch .. brilliant approach to developing children into self sufficient adults!
30
This would only be a problem in certain countries. The Netherlands is definitely not one of them. The United States on the other hand...hmmm.
10
I'm Dutch and a former scout and a father of two now grown up daughters. The Netherlands, as already stated by others, hardly have a dangerous landscape or wildlife. Roads are almost everywhere and the main danger are cars. Guns are for criminals and professional use.
Also: you don't deliberately expose your children to real danger, which is not the same as trying to reduce all risks to zero. You lear them about the risks they might encounter and sometimes you help other mans children when they get into trouble. A patch of nature in the neighbourhood makes all the difference.
Droppings are great. It's a pity that scouting is less popular now than in my time. Maybe because there still is some military reference to maintain a group order. My daughters were no scouts, but are not scared to know the world, step by step and I know quite some scouting families and they are doing great.
57
@matteo
I sort of regret not getting my sons into the nearby scouting group. But my husband and me are from the post-war generation that sees anything involving saluting a flag as proto-fascist. I really wish they would cut that stuff out.
12
The comments here that praise the practice seem to come from folks who were youths in the 50s and sixties. I am one of them. Our perceptions as a society are weird. Crime of all kinds is way way down, but the perceptions of crime is way way up. I once asked my wife how our children would ever develop street smart if they were never allowed on the street. The answer is not really printable. I did an end run by getting them into the Scouts and never going on a scout camping trip with them. The ability to figure out stuff for ones self only comes through experience. The tone of the article makes it sound too much like Marine boot camp, which it is not. The leaders know generally where the kids are and MY GOD, they have GPS and a phone. Come on!!!!
36
The Boy Scouts of America “dropped” me as part of the Wilderness Survival merit badge when I was a kid in the 1980s. It was great.
19
In our overprotective American society, this would land parents in jail.
14
Compare to the US where the police are called when somebody sees an 11 year old riding their bike alone home from the park, and the parents are threatened with child endangerment.
36
No every child gets the gifts I received as a child. I grew up in a wetland wildlife sanctuary- water and marsh in all directions. Our house was small- we learned to be self-entertaining. We explored our world by boat, on foot, on ice- mapping our own territories as we grew. We made our own place-names, made friends with wildlife, got lost and found again. I am not afraid of the world, since I know how to find a path.
20
@Patrise, read where the crawdads sing—you’ll like it!
5
Is a great way to build confidence and learn about working with others to achieve a goal. I didn't do it as a child but as a basic training exercise in the US Army. In America, the forests are doubtless safer places than inner city neighborhoods at night. But good samaritans might notify Child Protective services which could lead to charges against parents or even foster placement of children. You'll recall the brother and sister, around age 10, in Maryland who were scooped up by CPS when merely walking home from the park themselves, placed in temporary foster care.
12
We grew up in the city in the 1970s, and even then -- in the summertime -- as kids we were basically forbidden from being in the house after breakfast. We were briefly let inside for lunch, then forced back out until dinnertime. I think our parents/grandparents had a vague idea of where we were -- but, certainly, it was "not in the house." We would beg to stay in to watch cartoons, but if it wasn't raining, we were outside; and once outside, we had a blast: getting lost, falling down, playing games, meeting "bad" kids from the other side of the neighborhood -- and learning how to negotiate it all by sundown.
Fast forward to adulthood, and today my siblings, cousins and I all managed to graduate high school, get college degrees, and become contributing, quite self-sufficient people.
82
@dcbcn
Ditto my sibblings and I in a southern state.
7
My three daughters attended The Waldorf School of Garden City, NY, whose curriculum for seniors in high school included a week long trip to Camp Glen Brook, in New Hampshire. During this trip, the kids underwent a test of their mastery of navigational basics. With a compass, they were dropped in small groups all over the countryside, and had to wend their way to the camp on their own. The lore always included harrowing tales, but all in all, there was a sense of mastery and accomplishment. The School has been doing this for decades, and I have never heard of a bad experience. My heritage is Dutch, therefore I heartily approve!
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@Ignacio Gotz
How lovely! Especially given that tuition at The Waldorf School of Garden City runs to over $20K/yr!
6
As Boy Scout growing up in NYC in the early 1960's, My summers at Ten Mile River Boy Scout Camps were the highlight of my life. My parents at first thought I would hate it and signed me up for the shortest time available - it turned into the whole summer and many summers thereafter. I learned to cook, to shoot, hike, fish, swim, and and be responsible for myself as well as those around me. A GPS? how about a compass, flashlight and a basic knowledge of the sun and stars to know where I was. I owe a debt to scouting for helping to form my outlook on life and understanding self reliance. To abandon our technology of the moment and survive in nature is a lesson we should all have growing up.
34
This seems all very mild and since it’s organized by adults, that defeats the purpose. I grew up in England and in the fifties my friend Julia and I at age 12 went youth hostelling in southern England on our bikes for 3 days. Never phoned home, had a wonderful time.
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@Deborah I grew up in India in the 1970s. My boarding school allowed (actually, practically forced) students to go for 3-5 day treks unsupervised by adults once we got to 8th grade, ie 13-14 years old. We were given basic supplies and told when we had to be back. My school is at an altitude of 7,000 feet and in those days paved roads were few and because they had to follow the contours of the mountains, they added unneeded distance between end points. So we avoided the roads and walked cross-country on narrow ancient paths. In the summer months, we trekked at night to avoid the heat. The hills were still wild in those days, and if you shone a flashlight into the jungle that was just off the path, often eyes shone back at you. One time, we walked past a freshly killed goat lying by the path, most likely prey of a leopard that had heard us and stepped away. We slept in isolated villages, on the verandas of Raj-era government inspection bungalows that older boys had told us about, and in turn passed the knowledge on to kids in grades below us. We fished mountain streams and cooked our own food. It was often scary, but we came back from each trip exhilarated and proud of ourselves for handling it. I think it was an absolutely marvelous way to grow up.
30
Make this practice mandatory for all American kids - and fund the ones who can't afford it. I've been lost alone in an unfamiliar place - the experience saved my sanity and made me a writer.
13
My husband, whose mother (coincidentally) was from the Netherlands, rode his bicycle up the California coast with a friend when he was 15. They had a blast, made a few minor mistakes along the way and learned to be self-sufficient. All good things. However, that was in the early '70's. I don't know whether I could let a child of mine do something similar these days.
4
I feel like this should be a more common tradition around the world. Sounds amazing!
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The woods was my favorite place as a kid, and still is fifty years later. And what more basic test for an animal than to find home — it's only behind finding water and food. If you can have a safe experience of that at the right age, your values will be properly aligned.
11
Sorry to say, but you’re missing vital information on safety.
Nowadays (and also in te past) staff members are secretly around, continoulsy monitoring where the kids are. By being in the neighbourhoor, watching the kids gps signals, etc. Also routes that the kids will likely to take are monitored, and big roads are avoided.
It had everything to do with preperarions by the staff. They know very well that they are working with kids.
As you mention the times that it went wrong (which I also strongly dissapprove), please also mention the safetey features that are provided.
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@Joost that depends on the staff i guess. We give our kids old phones like a nokia 3310 which has no GPS signal to track. And everyone can anticipate the routes they will take, namely the routes towards the endpoint?
2
I grew up in Belgium, where droppings are quite popular. I went on quite a few of those and it was always something we looked forward to (and enjoyed) very much. Adventure!
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I understand where Charles Becker comes from. I was a scout leader for our two boys here in Massachusetts and I had quickly to learn the scouting in Massachusetts is not really scouting. My brother and I both joined the scouts in Sweden. We had some marvelous times and learned many things about life and built self confidence. There were forest games with 5-10 stations laid out along a route of some 5 miles or so. We had to find each station using map and compass; once at a station we had to perform various tasks such as cross a wide creek with just having an ax and a life line or to determine volume of a large barrel by using a 10 cm measuring stick and others, each station with a different task. Our dinner could have been hot dogs over a fire and making mashed potatoes using powdered potatoes and water from a nearby creek. In a winter camp, the scout leaders could wake us up in the middle of night to save a wounded person; following red food coloring in the snow to find the wounded and put together a makeshift bed using branches and blankets and carry the person to the tent area. It certainly added self confidence, and aided us in many ways in our lives, perhaps the most importantly helped us become good husbands and parents by having close and supportive relations with our children. We had a lot of fun, I too treasure those memories to this day.
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@fardhem1
I had a similar experience as a parent of a boy scout. The troop went on a winter camping weekend in a nearby state forest and I was excited to share that with my son. Arriving we discovered that "winter" camping meant staying in a large lodge with two roaring stoves. My son stayed with his friends while I went and pitched my tent and spent the night outside with the stars.
4
Mixed feelings. One of the worst feelings in the world is for kids to feel abandoned and alone and unable to successfully complete a challenge. One of the most empowering feelings for a kid is to be a success when confronted with a challenge. Possibly the parents and kids having an open minded dialogue re this event is best. Not all kids would be emotionally equipped to handle it.
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@Free..Peace
Seriously?
Failing and learning how to succeed next time is important...
Giving them only challenges they will always succeed sets them up for failure later in life
1
Just put some terrified gun toters in the woods with pistols ready to kill them and you get the American experience. You tell the gun toters the woods are full or wild animals. In 1962 at the age of 11 I made it from suburban Bethesda to teh DC central library. Took more skill and courage than a walk in the protected Dutch woods with a gps and some friends. (and yes I have been in the Dutch woods)
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@Vince I couldn't formulate exactly why I thought this would be a bad idea in the United States, and your post helped to jog my memory. In the United States (this has happened more than once) a kid gets lost, knocks on someone's door and gets shot. If the kid is a person of color his/her odds are much worse. American exceptionalism, I guess.
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Both my sons , members of our local scoutingclub, immensely enjoyed their summercamps, learning to build a campfire, becoming great friends with fellowscouts, learning and helping each other, solving arguments, enjoyed getting very dirty, and the dropping ofcourse. They grew in friendship, loyalty, leadership and problemsolving: great assets in later life. The article has a scary undertone, surely made for the American reader, but I can surely recommend growing up this way. Ofcourse the landscape and wildlife is not dangerous and child abuse quite rare in scouting. Quietly there are always scoutleaders on the look out during droppings. Sadly "overprotecting parenting", is a growing tendency, not only in Holland.
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Growing up in Albuquerque in the late 1950s/early 1960s, chasing lizards on the mesa, bicycling wherever we wanted, the only instructions--be home for dinner. Wonderful!
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@Gordon Bronitsky
Same in Mississippi at the same time.
10
I had a bicycle and rode all over my town. Three or four miles to a store or donut shop that was open early in the morning. No danger or worries, just be home for dinner.
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I'd hate for my Albuquerque children to be riding bikes unsupervised now with so many drunk and speeding drivers on the road.
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In the U.S. we call them drop-off's, and they have been a feature of certain college and organizational orientations since at least the 1960's. We may have "borrowed" the idea from the Dutch, although I never heard that. All of the organizations I've been part of do them in (at least) pairs. I'd be a lot more nervous these days than 50 years ago! Sad commentary on our times, that.
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@Neal
We probably borrowed it from the Anglo scouting tradition, and it took off here, while it diminished in the US and Britian (or something like that). The word ‘dropping’, mind you, is a give-away, as it is not Dutch, but a loanword from English.
7
What is far more terrifying for American children is how many of them are sent out into the world having never had to rely on themselves because their parents tried to protect them into adulthood. Emotional breakdowns and a very high rate of depression among college students are among the results.
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@weekend
In the fifties, when we were kids, my mom kicked us out of the house everyday. Summertime meant outdoor play time. My dad built our house at the edge of 7 miles of woods and that was our playground. Being the youngest and female, I tagged along with the older boys. I am thankful for having the experiences I did. Sometimes I had to find my way out of the woods alone, but it gave me a confidence and sense of independence I have carried as an adult.
I know the dropping sounds a bit rough, but I think it can be a character building experience.
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@weekend Another problem is that once kids get to college and demand their 'safe places' along with insisting on censorship, cool dorm rooms that feel like their room at 'home' - the colleges comply!!! Then these overly-coddled morons enter the work force and want the same attention. Shame on the adults.
6
In a time when the distance between humans and nature becomes greater with each passing day, this type of practice appears to be an effective reminder that we are guests in a shared house. Unfortunately, this tends to remain a fleeting consideration for most of us.
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Closest thing to this we did in Scouts were snipe hunts. And we were probably 13-14 years old.
8
The light and composition of the folks around the fire
reminded me of a certain Dutch master... Nice work Dmitry Kostukov.
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50 years ago here in the U.S. we called very similar activity a “snipe hunt”!
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@michael sherman md
One snipe hunt was featured on a black-and-white afternoon TV series called “Spin and Marty”. These two teen boys enjoyed hair-raising adventures.
1
People who spend time in nature are happier and healthier. I think this Dropping sounds like a blast for kids who have a little outdoor experience to gain a sense of mastery and independence. American kids spend too much time indoors these days and need outdoor time to alleviate depression and to make them stewards of their planet.
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The Dutch seem to be doing OK and the people I knew from there seemed to be doing OK, and they all went through with this, so, I'm guessing this is OK too.
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Great concept. I wish American parents were more hands off in raising their children.
52
I was born in 63' and my friend and I always wandered in the woods by ourselves. We were even chased by a pack of boys and only in hindsight did I consider we could have gotten molested by them. However, doing things on our own made me prize my childhood, especially wandering in the woods; and I always looked forward to getting out of the house and having some fun.
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Droppings are the best! We were never hungr or scared, backpack filled with snacks and candybars and lots of fun.
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Droppings might be common pratice amongst scouts but scouting is quite impopular in the Netherlands and dropping kids in the woods at night is no common practice here. Not that I’m against it, on the contrary, but you would expect better research from a Pullitzer-price winner.
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@Casper
As a Dutch camp counsellor I can confirm this was and is quite common during camp. I've been a part of droppings since 12 at church camps.
Now I organize children's camps myself. For 8-12 year olds. No droppings in this age group.
We have 'dierengeluidenspel' (animal sounds game) and ' smokkelspel' (smugglersgame)
Children will walk (unattended)in smaller groups in a smaller part of the wood.
In search of campleader that make an animal sound and collect a card.
Or taking cards from a to b and avoiding leaders who play the role of customs officers and try to take the cards.
They go off the paths. There will be ticks. We will spray them on before hand. And do a tick check everytime we come back from the forest.
My children experience droppings with the animation teams of campings. It's not just scouting. It is still common.
We do encounter other groups doing droppings when we are on camp.
Most of them aren't scouts. But part of a school, sports team or church group. It is still common. But technology did change the character of droppings the last decade.
(On a side note. Our forests are way smaller than those in the states. You wont walk for days to find a house or village. No dangerous wildlife or people with guns either B-) )
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@Casper
Thank you for saying that. I lived in NL for seven years, and this is the first I've heard of this phenomenon! The article made it seem ubiquitous.
3
@Casper
This is not a scout thing, all schools do this in last year of middle school before they go to high school.
I don't know of any adult who hasn't done this when they were at middle school.
Droppings are very common, not only by scouting groups.
Have a grandchild who did this, two years in Scotland...no guns there, no poisonous critters..in communication if needed...fine
30
@Bev Wonderful in today's little Holland and/or Scotland. No such safe place in Trump's USA.
I mention those little countries vs. ours today, where violence and race hatred are applauded by our "leaders" and sometimes the police are not always protectors (if one isn't white.)
6
I remember a similar experience in Austria when I was sent to a summer camp for expat Polish children. From age 10 on we were expected to act as night sentries, meaning that we trudged around the entire perimeter of the camp in the dark with nothing but a flashlight.
About three weeks into the trip one of our tents was set ablaze by a group of supped Neo Nazi teens and adults had to take over sentry duty. Still just "armed" with flashlight.
My childhood otherwise was spent roaming through every corner of West Berlin on foot and public transport. When I emigrated to the US, I lived in Washington DC and NYC. Luckily I was already street-wise at 16. Kids gain nothing by being over-protected.
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I beg your pardon?
If this sounds crazy to you, it is because you are not Dutch.
Droppings like these are not normal and accepted by a large minority among adults and young people in the Netherlands. It perhaps is within the boyscout community, but really that is such an irrelevant small group in the Netherlands...
.
Droppings like these are a legal problem for the adult coaches/responsible people if constant monitoring of these young kids while roaming unknown territory is impossible.
This is the same nonsense about the Dutch as that we are allowed to kill our elderly our talk them into voluntary death called euthanasia.
15
Droppings are not only a Scouting practice. I know that sports summer camps often do them and also college student clubs. I know because I’ve experienced them.
5
@Rob Geurtsen You call 85000 youth-members and 25000 volunteers an ''irrelevant small group''?
If you do the rough math it means that one out of every 155 Dutch inhabitants is a scout.
5
@Rob Geurtsen
Rob, droppings happen all summer, all over the place! And I don't know any parent who has a problem with them.
As a teenager I was "dropped" a few times during summer (sailing) camps, and I loved it!!
As mentioned by others, nature in the Netherlands is quite safe. And it's also worth noting that during the summer holidays there is a maximum of 5 hours of darkness... I hope my kids will be able to do this someday with their friends !
7
I could never make a convincing argument that, left to their own devices. kids are more resilient and inventive than we might think. In the late 1950's we lived in a town with a reservoir a couple of miles away (uphill, certainly). During trout season, four or five of us would get up at 4am, peddle to Phoenix Lake, and start fishing with the first light of dawn. Sometimes we brought a couple pretty sad trout home, but just as often nothing. I went on to become an Eagle Scout and treasure all of those memories to this day.
But the convincing argument for that kind of childhood now has to come from Europe, Canada, Australia, or generally anywhere not within the United States. Yes, I'm a little grumpy about that, but I'll get over it, and in the meantime, what is a "primitive GPS"? We had an orienteering compass at best.
Be Prepared.
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Kids left on their own in the wildernes... am i the only one thinking “Lord if the Flies?”
3
@Mercy Wright You have to see it in perpective. We don't have forests, we don't have mountains. We call them that but an average "forest" in the Netherlands is an area of 1 by 4 kilometers, and it ist kept like a garde. We have "mountains" but the highest one is 398 meters. Netherlands is small.
17
@Mercy Wright
yes
11
This about sums up the difference between DC and Amsterdam in raising teens. It is so hard to give them a sense of independance here. And more so for girls. I can’t imagine the freedom kids here feel once they are off to college!
11
@Maria Holland:
but thats all been "fixed" now with "safe spaces" and the like.
11
@RLiss
Another example of a fool throwing around a term they haven't bothered to understand.
"Safe space" just means "ground rules". For example, the ground rules for television are that you don't show certain things before 8pm. In my home, the ground rules are that we don't call each other names. If I say that my gaming group is a "safe space" with regards to race, I mean "we don't use racial slurs or disparage racial groups". That's really just good manners.
2
Night hikes led by Scouts and night games of capture the flag were de rigeur in the scout troops my son was in. They were confined to the Scout camp property, which while forested and restricted entry was generally not dangerous.
15
The Orientierungslauf in Switzerland is vaguely similar, though it’s more a competitive race with a rough map and compass (and during the day). This is wonderful: in nature, at night, using instincts and group work, some moonlight if lucky, and after the trek sausages by a campfire (and shrieking owls above). Indeed, who needs PlayStations ...
151
I grew up in rural Wisconsin next to a relatively large “forest” (private land but ok to wander). As kids my 3 siblings and I would usually just walk around and explore with our neighbors. We carried walkie-talkies to communicate back home, just in case, but never really needed to. While it’s not like the “dropping”, it feels close.
I think this trust our parents had in us contributed greatly to my independence as an adult. I feel so bad for children raised by anxiety-ridden helicopter parents; I know enough of them, and the lack of independence is astonishing.
236
My childhood was a lot like that. I lived in a relatively small city and my parents pretty much let me bicycle and walk anywhere I wanted. There were now gangs or bandits out there. But learning that I was responsible for myself and my entertainment happened early.
Europe is much older than the US, but they are more orderly in raising children. This sounds like an excellent idea!
42
It does help that Holland and its woods are pretty 'civilized': no major mountains or ravines, hardly any dangerous wildlife. In addition: the risk of getting shot at, whether by a hunter or when knocking at any unknown (farm) door is absolutely zero.
639
@Oscar true. The woods are also pretty small.
38
Yes but kids can be pretty wild also....at least in this country.
4
@Oscar
The mountains of Vermont ,where my son went winter camping with his Boy Scout troop, were civilized, but with flimsy sleeping bag and parka, it got pretty nippy up there. My son loved it - must have been our Dutch background. Who knew?
3
This is great, it was how I was raised, neglected and allowed to figure it out. I have little fear of being in a new place.
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@Jane I wasn’t neglected and I have no fear of being in a new place; in fact, I love going to new places! Perhaps your fearlessness about new places wasn’t borne of neglect but rather is just a natural skill of yours. I don’t think we should give neglect too much credit for fostering positive qualities; it is our positive qualities that help us to survive neglect.
4
This is surprising in 2019 America where a kid in a playground is a crime victim waiting to happen. It isn't surprising to those of us raised in earlier times. In the early 60's my friends and I roamed the woods after dark and found our way home, with the occasional misstep, of course.
I recently met a college student at a bike shop buying his first bicycle. Turns out his parents didn't ride and they felt riding on his own (in a prosperous suburb) would be too dangerous.
If I had kids today, they would probably end up in foster care.
333
I grew up in the 70s, also roaming the woods after dark with no parental supervision at all. But it's actually much, much safer now to be a child in most places than it was back then. Child abduction, and violent crime overall, is at the lowest level it's been in 50 years. And child mortality in the U.S. is probably lower than it's been for most of humanity in world history. Of course that doesn't stop the media and Internet from making it seem like a huge threat.
This is what makes our current climate of helicopter parenting even more insane. We are doing our children a terrible disservice by making them so dependent on their parents.
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@Dave
Exactly, all through the 60s, only difference being northern Minnesota. We just went out behind the barn, into the huge forest, wandered around, got lost and then found ourselves; it was only natural. Just looked at Google Earth; the "huge" forest was only a mile wide and half a mile deep, then roads, so we were never very lost - but we did learn, on our own, how to deal with the outdoors, summer and winter.
114
@Dave:
you are so correct: did you read about the neighbor who called police and social services on another mother who was allowing her daughter to WALK THEIR DOG in their suburb? And, yes, social services followed it up.
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