Many Germans usually do not let their children watch TV until they are about two or three years old. There are kids-only cable channels but most parents encourage their children to watch the programs that are on public television. Kids mostly watch TV before or after dinner -that is when children's programs are slotted for, between 5 and 7 pm. Many of the programs come from the United States or Japan and are dubbed over in German, but there are some German shows, too. Video games are extremely popular, just like in the United States, and there are also computer games and game consoles that you plug into your TV.

Kids generally start studying languages in the fifth grade when they are about ten or eleven years old, then add a second language in the seventh grade and sometimes a third elective language in the ninth grade. The first language studied is either French or English. Third language choices include Latin, Russian and Spanish

German kids like to read and they love the Harry Potter books so much that some kids try to read them in the original English. They also love a series of old mystery novels written by Enid Blyton, most comparable to The Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew type books.

As for sports, almost all German boys love to play soccer and watch the matches on TV, often with their fathers and friends. Girls study ballet and gymnastics and lots of kids do track and field sports. Girls also tend to like horses in Germany and Austria

Most kids have two or three travel vacations a year. In the winter or spring they go skiing and in the summer they go to the beach-sometimes in northern Germany, but mostly in Turkey, Italy, France, Mallorca or the Canary Islands. Some parents take their kids hiking in Bavaria or South Tyrol, Italy in the fall, or else families spend their summers hiking and camping in Scandinavia. Once a year, a family might travel to an exotic destination like the Dominican Republic, Thailand or Australia and it is not at all unusual for a fourteen-year-old kid to have traveled to one of these countries. Even though you don't need a passport to travel around Europe, most kids have one. The first weekend of the summer holiday the entire Autobahn (expressway) is packed with cars, north to south, since all Germans love to travel so much.