“They’re all aged between two and six years old, and they’re almost always scared to death when they first set out.”
By the age of 10 I was taking an intercity train about 70 miles to visit my grandmother by myself. A part of getting to my grandmother's place was to change trains for a local suburban one at an 8-platform interchange station and when I alighted from that suburban train I had to walk several miles to my grandmother's place, this meant crossing a main interstate highway.
I think we grossly underestimat%e what kids can actually do. It horrifies me to see the way kids are overprotected these days - driven to and from school etc.
Tragically, we've already bred and are still breeding generations of kids who are so timid that they're even frightened of their own shadows.
BTW, I wasn't unique, it was the norm for most kids back then. Moreover, my mother was overprotective of us kids by the then standard of other mothers. This annoyed me when in primary school as I'd get teased about it by other kids.
Nevertheless, the busiest time for traffic is school start and finish times when mothers clog the streets for many blocks around local schools. There's a school at the far end of my street and about a quarter hour before the end of the school day the street is blocked with cars.
It's madness, I feel really sorry for those kids and I think myself very lucky for the freedom I had as a kid in that I could roam anywhere and do anything I wanted without helicopter parents hovering over me everywhere I went.