Children are overprotected nowadays. When I was a kid a group of us would get together for Halloween and roam the neighborhoods unsupervised, that seems to have changed. It's detrimental to a child to be so protected from exploring his/her world. Unsupervised -to a reasonable extent- roaming of the world around them only serves to further curiosity and a thirst for knowledge. Be it walking down the street and admiring the houses or the nature around them.
The funny thing is: how is our time suddenly became more dangerous than the past? With hookers and drunks on every corner. With first cars driving without any sets of laws. With almost everyone carrying a weapon. How is it that in the past we had less crazy or dangerous people around? The over-protection is a real issue: how the hell do the children these days explore the world around them? Only TV and internet? That's not it: you can see but you cannot feel the world around you. You cannot become a certain part with it and take something from it inside you.