As someone with 6 years of successful fatherhood under my belt - what... no award? - I've often reminisced about my youth, or more precisely my parents' handling of my youth. I model a lot of my parenting, as do most I assume, on my own parents. I like the way I was brought up and while I do some things differently, I've got a great playbook to work from.
One of the wonderful things I remember is walking to school on my own at the age of 7 or 8. We lived in a section of Metro Toronto called Rexdale. Nowadays it has a significantly poorer reputation, much of which I think is still ill-deserved. Anyways, I used to walk a couple of blocks to school every day enjoying the sunshine and inspecting ants on the sidewalk. No muss. No fuss. My mom was an emergency nurse and as just about any offspring of an emerg nurse will tell you, they don't mince words. My mom had fully explained to me on many occasions prior, that there were bad people in this world. Not in a way that would hamper my enjoyment of life, it was just a matter of fact thing. She trusted that after explaining these things to me, I would know enough about potential dangers to avoid them. Luckily, and thinking more realistically, not surprisingly, I was never beckoned into a van by a stranger and never fell prey to some foaming-at-the mouth psychopath during all those 15 minute walks back and forth from school.
As a parent now, I confess to letting my daughter run (or ride) to visit the boys a couple of doors down for some well-enjoyed playtime before supper. I find it hard to resist a peek out the window to catch her mid-walk, but there have been a couple of times that I've been able to hold myself away from that window and given myself a good 2 or even 3 minutes before inevitably heading out into the garage and onto the driveway for some purported "yard work". I'm sure she knows that in fact the rake is a shoddy front for parental observation, but she's not of the age to really care whether I'm watching or not. That comes later I assume.
But still I want to build that trust. I know it will never be easy for me to sleep soundly even when she turns 35 and is finally allowed to start dating. 
Let's not even discuss turning 16 and asking for the car keys. Baby steps I tell ya.. baby steps.
Anyway, what brings all this on is a post by security guru Bruce Schneier on Overestimating Threats Against Children. It's thought provoking to say the least. And I'm inclined to rally against a lot of the fear mongering that pervades the media and society. Sure, all this stuff gets to me once in a while too, but then I force myself to step back and realize that having children (or adults) paralyzed by fear and anxiousness is not the way we should be living our lives - at least not my daughter's, and not mine.