5 THINGS THAT SHOCKED ME ABOUT RAISING MY KIDS IN GERMANY🇩🇪 New Zealand mum

hey guys welcome back to my channel I hope you're all doing really well so first of all I do apologize it has been quite a while since I have actually sat down to film a video life has been very busy and I am planning on making a video soon just explaining what has been going on but for now I am back with another good old classic raising kids in Germany Style video I love making these types of videos I know you guys enjoy them and I think I've got a good one for you today I am going to be talking about five things that shocked me about raising my kids here in Germany as many of you already know I am a New Zealander married to a German we have three children who were born and so far raised here in Germany I live in Germany because I love it here I love raising my kids here even though life here in Germany has just become so normal for me now I have to say the culture shocks they never really stop and I don't think they ever will so as long as the culture shocks keep coming I can keep bringing out this content for you okay guys let's jump into it in no particular order number one something that really shocked me about raising my kids here in Germany was when I first found out that it is actually illegal here in Germany to not vaccinate your children against measles the measles vaccination is mandatory here in Germany and it is strongly recommended or advised that you fully vaccinate your children it's basically frowned upon if you don't if you don't want to vaccinate your children against me here in Germany then they are not allowed to attend kindergarten or school and you will be faced with a fine of €2,500 so basically you have to and here in Germany homeschooling is illegal so you can't get away with homeschooling your children and not having them vaccinated so for me personally this is not a problem at all I support the vaccinations but in New Zealand there is absolutely no law that says you have to vaccinate your children there are a huge group of antivaxers in New Zealand those kind of crunchy MERS even if we did have this law in New Zealand homeschooling is legal and so these antivaxers would just pull their kids out of school and homeschool their children and that wouldn't be a problem even though I would have vaccinated my children anyway I was just shocked to learn that I had to like I did not have a choice and yeah I don't think that would go down that law would go down very well in New Zealand okay so moving on to another German parenting culture shock this happened just last week so this is a very new fresh culture shock for me that I just have to talk about so last week my son's class here in the first grade here in Germany but they were having a healthy breakfast that they were going to be preparing all together as a group which I think is so sweet and I really really love this idea so in the school app the parents received a notice just explaining what was going to be happening and it also said that our child had to bring a cutting board like a chopping board and also a knife for preparing like helping to prepare the breakfast and I was thinking a knife they have to bring a knife to school this was wild to me because never in a million years would a teacher in New Zealand ask their students to bring knives to school I showed my husband and he was like and they have to bring a knife to help you know cut up the fruit and vegetables for the healthy breakfast like it's not a big deal for me I was yeah it did say the children had to wrap up the knife in a kitchen towel when they were transporting it to school for obvious reasons but but I don't know I was a little bit like okay and I gave him a butter knife because I was thinking like surely surely they do not recommend taking uh like a sharp knife to school so when Mata got home from school one of the first things he said to me was oh mama why did you give me a buzer knife it was so blunt I couldn't cut up anything and all the other kids had sharp knives and I was thinking they expect me to give a sharp catch a knife to my child to take to school I don't know so I guess this is just part of what I always talk about in my German parenting related videos German parents put a lot more trust into their children and they let their children take risks and they are taught how to use a knife to cut food at a very young age and I guess this is just something that is normal and very acceptable here in Germany if you're German and you're watching this I would love to know whether this would have shocked you too or is this something totally normal maybe this is just a one-off situation that happened at my son's school or maybe this is totally normal in Germany I'd love to hear your feedback in my comment section okay guys so number three this is something that really has always shocked me about parenting like raising kids here in Germany and that is the dangerous what I would consider as a New Zealander dangerous playground here so I have briefly talked about this in other videos I want to go into a little bit more detail in this video but honestly some of the playgrounds here make me very nervous and there is one playground in particular not far from where I live this is my son Mato climbing up this playground equipment that I consider pretty dangerous for kids honestly every time my children do this I can barely look it scares the living daylight out of me and I just think think of all the things that could go wrong it is so so high and you know if my child slips then I don't even want to think what could happen German parents don't seem to bet an eyelid they are so chilled about letting their children do things like this for me as a parent from New Zealand I just can't get used to it I don't know it's like should I chill out a little bit probably I should because my children can climb this playground equipment perfectly well um but I don't know it's something that I struggle with here in Germany where to find a balance German children are super confident most German children have awesome gross motor skills I very rarely see accidents here at the playgrounds in Germany so maybe I just need to chill out okay so something else that shocked me was the fact that German doctors or more specifically pediatricians will often hand your children a little bag of Gummy Bears or maybe a lollipop as a reward for being brave after getting their vaccinations or just sort of any type of injection or something like that this seems to be quite normal here in Germany at least with the doctor we go to I don't know whether it's like this all over Germany but yeah I was just surprised that a pediatrician would be rewarding a child with candy um I personally think it's fine like like I will give my children sweet and moderation I don't see anything wrong with that but honestly I don't think this would go down well with every parent I actually remember with our first daughter Amelia we didn't give her sugar for the first year of her life you know firsttime parents can be pretty extreme with that kind of thing we chilled out a little bit by the time we got to our second child and then even more so with our third child but I remember her getting a little bag of Gummy beers and thinking oh my goodness was like like freaking out oh no she can't have sugar I was thinking I mean it's a little bit ridiculous when I look back but at the time I didn't like the fact that she was just handed gummy beers I don't know that was just something that shocked me when I first became a mother here in Germany okay so last but not least this is something that continues to shock me here in Germany and once again I had talked about this briefly in another video it so appropriate for this video so I'm going to get into a little bit more detail this has to do with Germans overdressing their children don't get me wrong I'm not talking about all German parents but I have seen many German parents overdressing their children particularly in the in between Seasons so German parents are really really good about dressing their children appropriately for the winter weather so you will see almost every German child just Decked Out out from head to toe in really good quality winter gear like winter boots and snow gear and you know as I said German parents are really good with keeping their children warm but when it comes to Spring in particular oh my goodness there some German parents get it wrong okay so I'm going to give you a classic example of something I see all the time here so it's springtime here in Germany and at the beginning of Spring we had some quite nice weather so we had one day where it was around I would say like 23° C and it probably got up to about 25° C it was not super hot but it was pretty warm and so I dressed my children in shorts and t-shirt and sandals my whole family were dressed in shorts and t-shirt we were perfectly comfortable I thought that these were appropriate clothes to wear in this weather but my family and I went for a walk that day and I was the one that felt out of place because everywhere I looked there were children dressed in winter clothes like woolly hats and big thick jackets I even saw one little boy little toddler dressed in a snowsuit this was beautiful sunny weather like as I said there was a high of like 25° C that day and these kids were dressed full winter and I just feel as though German parents I don't know what it is but many German parents just for some reason they just can't get out of winter mode it takes them a long time before they can break out their shorts and you know t-shirts and especially like dressing the kids in summer clothes it really takes a long time for them to be ready to put their kids in summer clothes this is so weird to me I don't know I was actually talking about this the other day with a friend of mine she is also a New Zealand uh raising her kids in Germany and she brought her son to kindergarten just the other day and he was wearing shorts and she got some like really weird reactions about it like ooh shorts okay she said the weather was warm and she thought it was appropriate to dress her son in shorts and obviously from a German's point of view it wasn't the time to bring out the shorts so anyway guys I have come to the end of this video I really hope you enjoyed it I hope you found it entertaining and I hope if you're a German parent watching this you don't take offense to anything I've talked about I love living in Germany and there are so many amazing wonderful things about raising my kids here but there are certain things that are just very different between our two cultures and I think it's really interesting to talk about these cultural differences so anyway guys if you enjoyed this video then don't forget to give it a big thumbs up it really helps out my channel I would love you to consider subscribing to my channel if you haven't already feel free to connect with me on Instagram and I will see you again really soon bye