The curious Dutch summer ritual: leaving children alone in the forest at night

In Holland, a curious and widespread rite of passage provides that children are abandoned in the forest to learn how to become adults.

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Alone, bewildered, in fear to get lost, wrapped in darkness, surrounded by the sounds of wild animals. So they find themselves Dutch children abandoned in the forest by mum and dad.

Like modern “Hansel and Gretel”, they go into the woods to face their fears, hoping not to run into mischievous goblins, cruel gnomes and evil witches, and it doesn't matter that the night is dark and stormy, in Holland it has been like this for centuries.

The rite of passage that makes them become adults is called "drop down", which means "to be thrown down", because the purpose is "to make children fall into the world", to wake them up when the time has come, between the ages of 12 and 13, so that they can immediately learn to face the challenges of life with their own strength. Because the Dutch are like this, independent, and they care about the autonomy of their children, convinced that it is fundamental for their future.

Although compared to in the past there are some more limits, the practice has in fact been regulated, it is still rare for parents to follow their children at a distance, usually leaving them completely alone. And the team of scouts who often deposit them in unknown places returns to the base, waiting for them.

Children immerse themselves in the forests in groups and also spend the whole night before finding the way again. The less fortunate happen to be blindfolded before the "abandonment" and the most mischievous adults hide in the surroundings to plot horrid tricks!

But it is so, according to the Dutch, that one learns to rely on oneself and one's own strength, to be a group, not to depend excessively on parents, to understand that life involves inevitable challenges and that we must learn to face them. So much so that the ancient rite of passage has not disappeared at all over the centuries, indeed today it is more alive than ever.

And if to us it may seem strange, bizarre, even cruel, overprotective as we are towards our children, for the Dutch we are the crazy ones! Could they have some reason?

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Source: nytimes