But on those occasions when the bureaucratic requirements get silly, people just accept it. Those requirements are the rails, and you need to run along them.

What's age-appropriate? The nails were too big to swallow and the hot glue guns the kind they sell at CVS. The kids cut and poked themselves and learned to be careful.

At summer camp when he was 8 he learned to weld, braise and solder. 12 kids aged 8-10, one instructor. I saw a photo one parent took: instructor helping kid hammer something on an anvil; behind his back a couple of kids kneeling and welding.

Another story I love: when he was 12, my son and his friends found bottle of vodka in the schoolyard. Being 12 year old boys they did the obvious: filled on of the kids' sneakers with the vodka and set fire to it in the schoolyard. Apparently the math teacher walked by and called out "Boys! Class is in 5 minutes!"

I thought the obvious would be that they drank it :D

Yup, mostly that. Nobody lost a hand or was rushed to the burn ward.

Edit: I see that as I was writing my comment, you added an edit about soldering irons. Mine was definitely a big Weller "soldering gun"

Nothing wrong with hot tools, but it's nice to limit the severity of the burns while they're learning. A small soldering iron, for example, will hurt but you probably won't do any serious damage. Similar with hammers, a ball peen or mallet will hurt but won't break skin like a claw could.

I've driven a chisel into my finger while trying to finish a mortise and tenon joint. Use a vice, not your hand, to hold the wood. Came close to ripping out an artery while climbing an aluminium fence, just ended up with a nasty scar on the side of my wrist. I took much more care climbing fences after that. Barbed wire fence scars across my legs though. Can't even remember how that happened.

Anyway, kids do stuff and hopefully they learn without killing themselves. A few cuts, scratches, a bit of blood and some stitches seems like par for the course.

You don’t need hot glue guns to do damage to each-other.

She was helping me solder together this robot kit. I asked her to wait a minute while I ran downstairs to get my camera. When I came back up, she'd decided to just do it by herself.

Right after I took this photo she yelled "Mommy, Daddy is letting me do something really dangerous all by myself!" :P

Germans have very strong sense of behavioural norms that are communicated more subtly.

You don't get such a cohesive culture without fairly strict norms.

In America - you are probably referring to the 'PC rules' which are things that come at you as an adult, they are constantly changing, vague, locale-specific. And it's more of a new phenom.

Also - not sure if kindergartners should be using hammers either :). Maybe tiny ones?