Comment by mlyle

Kids need to be not kept in a tiny parental bubble and do some things with (manageable levels) of risk. They need to grow into independent people, and to understand their limits.

Our society is not as safe as I would like, but it is probably safer than ever before, when children roamed, played, and did errands over wide ranges.

My world was orders of magnitude smaller than my parents'; despite my efforts, my children's world is orders of magnitude smaller than mine. In part, this is because of attitudes like yours, where a child being unwatched is not okay under any circumstance.