Your story reminds me of my spouse: He was visiting the US and somehow wound up in a Chuck E Cheese. Playing for the children was war scenes, with tanks and soldiers. He was pretty appalled it was acceptable for children due to violence.

And children were one of the things that does seem very different to me - shockingly so. I'm American, and most children are fairly quiet. But they are much more free to roam, within some reason and allowed to play quite often, even while at school. I'm going to guess all this helps out quite a bit along with your last points.