It's certainly a balance, especially with young kids; I'm sure you're well aware as both teacher and parent of the importance of finding them tasks that are challenging without being impossible. Failure shouldn't be the norm, obviously, for either expectation or reality, but the best mindset seems to be one of confidence that admits the possibility of failure. Long term success is often less about never failing than about the confidence and intelligence to overcome obstacles that result in momentary failure.

Not to downplay real and justified concerns about child abduction, but the media cultivated fears about abduction and molestation worries and sometimes annoys me. Statistically, children are far more likely to be abducted and/or abused by close family members than strangers, so while it's a legitimate playground concern, it's not the epidemic that Dateline and others of that ilk make it out to be. That's not to imply I think you're paranoid (though there are certainly paranoid parents out there) and I definitely encourage parental monitoring; even if there's no risk of abduction there's still the risk of kids running into traffic and the like if parents are inattentive or too far away to intervene should it be necessary. I'm reminded of the story recently posted here about the four year old girl being sued by the family of a woman whose hip was broken when the child ran into her on her tricycle. The woman was still recovering from the broken hip when she died, so she basically spent the last months of her life as an invalid simply because a couple moms were too busy chatting to stop their kids from racing on a city sidewalk, or prevent them striking a pedestrian hard enought to knock her down when they did. I think it's absurd to hold a four year old responsible for that, but the parent is very much responsible. Monitoring is important, and staying close enough to intervene if/when it's necessary, but so is accurately determining what makes that intervention "necessary" and what's a situation a child can and should deal with unassisted. They may still make the wrong decision, but it remains important that they have the opportunity to correct that rather than having someone do it for them.

I didn't intend a shot at all modern parents any more than the article did. It's perplexing and frustrating though that many (though not all) parents want to run every aspect of a childs life that should be the childs, then allow the child to run amok in all the areas where parental involvement is necessary. If Little Johnny get an F on his report card it's time to call the school board and petition for the principal to be fired, but if he's breaking peoples windows as a hobby, well, boys will be boys and we should just let him "express himself". It's so bass ackwards no wonder there's so much alienation and anti-social behavior in modern society, but that's ultimately not the fault of some faceless "society", rather the fault of the many inviduals of which that society consists.