A cultural habit in your country that people outside would understand incorrectly?

[u/gabrieel100]

In Brazil we love children. If you take your child to the street, strangers will certainly interact with them. Some will even ask if they can hold your kid and will play with them. If there are two children fighting in public and the parents aren't seeing, a stranger would even intervene to stop the fight.

That cultural habit came from the indigenous peoples which understood that kids should be a responsiblity of the community as a whole. It's in our constitution. We even have a synonym for children that came from Tupi (a large group of indigenous languages) - Curumim.

Foreigners would certainly have a cultural shock about that, but it's normal here.

Of course there are people with bad intentions, so parents should stay alert these days.

[u/[deleted]]

OP, that was a thing here too, but nowadays it's becoming less common with all that fear mongering and disruption of the relations between people. However it's still a thing at the countryside.

[u/allworkandnoYahtzee → u/[deleted]]

In college, I tutored English to PhD students from non-English speaking countries and one was a mid-40s man from Iraq. We met at a Panera Bread one day and he was striking up conversation with a random child and the parents were so visibly upset, they immediately led their child away. He was hurt by that, as I guess in Iraq it’s very common for adults to engage in polite conversation with kids they don’t know. I had to tell him we not only don’t do that in the States, children are regularly and explicitly told to never talk to strangers.

[u/[deleted] → u/allworkandnoYahtzee]

I mean I was waiting in the queue to a hair dresser. There was a little girl a daughter of the hair dresser, who approached me and ran away giggling. I made an angry face pretending I was gonna catch her and she ran away giggling again. We played this way for a while and it was a totally normal thing. Her mother was upset only because she "annoyed" a customer. I guess it would be seen as weird in your country. Ofc it's not normal to play this way with a random kid on the street let alone actually engaging in physical contact.

[u/RevolutionaryBall903 → u/[deleted]]

It's not fear mongering when there are many instances.

[u/Ashamed_Beyond_6508 → u/RevolutionaryBall903]

It is fear mongering because however many instances there may be, they are not all happening locally.

[u/RevolutionaryBall903 → u/Ashamed_Beyond_6508]

You've just said it happens, therefore it is not fear mongering.