You daft bat…
Their bicycles were carefully parked and they were sitting on the bench near my house.
Here, in our village/commune we always talk to visitors/anyone, just to check they are OK… it’s a part of local French life which I have been pleased to adopt. 
Drinking water is especially important re dehydration during a heatwave and public toilets are very important for ladies… men can go find a tree/bush.. but ladies generally prefer/require something a little more genteel. 
Confidence is important, but (in my experience) not exactly in the way you suggest, @marko
(I am usually the person who listens and asks questions, which is not a useful characteristic with strangers. It’s not a lack of confidence, more a character trait.)
OTOH, I have British friends who are extremely confident in their French. I listen to them speaking French “in the wild” and it’s clear - from my understanding, and from the reactions of the people they speak to - that their confidence somewhat exceeds their ability.
So I’d say @plod is right (too). You need some basis with which to practise.
I think my understanding of learning French now is that it’s a combination of formal learning, from books/audio/video/classes/whatever, followed by practising speaking French in real conversations, followed by more learning, followed by more speaking.
It also helps to learn stock phrases and constructions into which you can plug different verbs or nouns.
Guilty as charged and I used to fret about it. Now I just crack on and don’t worry about mistakes though I do welcome correction.
I see no problem in that. None whatsoever. They may even be well aware that it’s the case and totally unconcerned by judgement. Good on them for cracking on!
Edit: honest to dog, I typed my reply before reading @JohnH above!!
Yes, I had basics in place but I do think it entirely possible just to listen and start. It is after all pretty much how we learned our 1st language!
I realise what I said sounded grudging. It was 75% admiration and the rest mild envy - so not criticism: we’re all different.
As you say, it works.
(The lack of correction is a problem, though. Even if I ask for it, I don’t get it.)
Yes - but I’d expect an adult learning a language to be far more advanced in the target language after a couple of years than a 3 or 4 year old native speaker, for all sorts of reasons. Your accent probably won’t be as good and the mistakes you make won’t be the same, but overall your grasp of the language will be better for daily life and speaking about all sorts of things. Learning a foreign language the way you learnt your native language isn’t necessarily the most efficient way, I say this as a teacher and learner of languages.
Oh indeed not.
A newborn is learning heaps more than just a language! Poor wee thing, it must be overwhelming in those first years. Crikey, how do they even work out those noises even meaning anything at all and are not just noises. And why not animals too? What do those noises mean? Truely incredible. No wonder it takes time to utter those first words.
You wouldn’t take as long to learn another language, since you’ve already a huge amount of learning in place. You know for instance that someone making noises at you is trying to convey some meaning and your life experience, and the context, can narrow it further. You’re knowledge of grammar generally helps you identify possibilities. The rest is merely polishing
But indeed there are more effectives ways so, no, I wasn’t suggesting it as a tactic. Only that it was possible. Better imo to get some basics in place and use them to get out into the wild and learn.
My excellent french teacher has given me a good link called inner french. It is totally free and has been produced by a french tutor. The site consists of 200 podcasts on interesting topics such as robotics stereotypes etc. They are in order of difficulty. The oldest are spoken slowly with simpler language but they progressively become more difficult and spoken at a normal speed. It is suggested that you listen to each podcast about three times without looking at the transcript the more you listen the more you understand from the context. Anyway it’s working for me and I actually look forward to the next podcast